4 



GLEANINGS 



FOR 



Uj_i i\J_J 




ERS, 






Gathered From Different Fields, 



by 



ROBERT VAUGHAN GRIFFITH, 



Columbus, Ohio. 



*' The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold 
and silver." — David. _^ 



k 

No..&£W 



C/y. 



l88l. 






COTT & HANN, BOOK PRINTERS, 
Columbus, Ohio. 



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Entered according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by 

ROBERT V. GRIFFITH, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



TO THE READER. 



Dear Reader : — The following stories and extracts 
have been carefully gathered from different fields ; and 
every one of them says something about the Word of 
God. The Divine Book is the centre of this little 
volume. As the planets in our solar systems, although 
they differ from each other as to magnitude, climate, 
velocity, etc. , yet they all revolve around the sun which 
is the centre ; so the following stories and extracts, 
although they differ from each other as to length and 
quality, yet they all revolve around the Word of God as 
their centre. They illustrate its excellency, its power, 
and its adaptation to the ends for which it was given. 
On the following pages, thou wilt meet with Dr. Hall, 
and Dr. Schaff, of New York, Dr. Storrs, of Brooklyn, 
Dr. Parker, of London, Bishop Simpson, Professor 
Luthardt, of Leipsic, D' Aubigne, Jo Jin Locke, Henry 
Rogers, Talmage, Spurgeon, etc., etc. I have endeavored 
to make it a book for everbody. And if the reading of it 
will be the means to increase thy love to the Holy Bible, 
the Gleaner will be abundantly rewarded. This is his 
hope and prayer. . 

January 12, 1881. R. V. G. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

He Loved His Mother's Bible 9 

A Bible Baked .' 10 

A Pleasing Recollection 11 

Do You Read Your Bible? 12 

A Hidden Church 13 

Personal Sacrifice to Obtain a Bible 15 

A Mother's Gift 17 

How Much is it Worth? 20 

Finding a Girl in the Bible 22 

Influence of Good Words 24 

."God's Seed Will Come to God's Harvest" 25 

The Bible in Madagascar 27 

Witnessing the Truth 33 

How the Bible Grows on Us 36 

Loving the Bible 37 

The Bible... 39 

About a Bible in a Hotel 41 

WhyXis the Bible so Little Read? 44 

Working for Jesus '. 50 

What the Bible is '. 51 

The Infidel and His Dying Wife 54 

Read the Bible— Read it All '. 56 

Tried and Proved 60 

The Bible a Book for the People 64 

The Bible in Olden Days, 66 



VI CONTENTS. 

Science and the Bible 68 

Our Story Re-told 72 

Regard Paid to Scripture by the Church 82 

A Farthing Candle 88 

00 Shaw Mah 90 

The Unity and the Variety of the Bible 93 

For the Jew as Well as for the Gentile 100 

The Bible and Literature 103 

How an Indian Prince was Converted 107 

The Christian Revelation the Sure Standard of Morality 110 

Bible Study a Guard against Spiritual Coldness and Decline .. 117 

Effects of Bible Reading on the Hindoos 119 

The Bible and the Republic 122 

The Old Man's Bible-Box 131 

Light Out of Darkness 133 

The Word of God Only 136 

The Bible-Reading Engineer 140 

•' The Word" 146 

"Sweeter than Honey'' 150 

Two Ways of Reading the Bible 152 

A Translated Bible is the Word of God 156 

The Great Theme of the Bible 157 

Treasure in Heaven 161 

God's Epistle 171 

The Bible Contrasted with Other Sacred Books 173 

Story of a Jewish Maiden 178 

The Bible is a Marvelous Book 182 

Attractions of the Bible 185 

A Boy who Saved his Bible 187 

Directions for Reading the Bible 189 

The Style of the Bible 191 

The Difficulties of Scripture 199 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 



GLEANINGS 



FOR 



BIBLE READERS. 



HE LOVED HIS MOTHER'S BIBLE. 

Some years ago, a small boy came into the office of a 
steamboat company in Albany, N. Y., and seeing a gen- 
tleman busy writing, he took off his hat and approached 
him, waiting to be spoken to. — "What do you want, 
boy?" soon said the gentleman. "I am a poor boy, 
sir, and have walked much of the way from Canandaigua 
on my way to New York, to my aunt's ; my money is 
nearly all gone, and I have come to see if you won't 
please to send me in one of your steamers." "Have you 
runaway ?" " No sir, my mother is dead, and I prom- 
ised her I would go to my aunt in New York, sir, and I 
am going, if I have to walk there." "What is in that 
bundle under your arm, that you hold so close?" "It 
is something I value very much, sir, and I would sooner 
walk to New York and back again, sir, than part with 
it." "Let me see it. " "You will give it to me again, 
sir, if I let you take it?" After unrolling it from a dirty 
cloth, it proved to be a small Bible, which his dying 
mother had given him, with her blessing, on his promise 
2 



10 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

to read it and go to his aunt. ''Have you read it much?" 
1 'Yes, sir; when tired and hungry, I have often sat down 
by the roadside and read my mother's Bible, and it 
seems to feed and rest me." "I will give you enough 
for it to pay your passage." "I cannot sell it, sir — in- 
deed I cannot, even if I have to walk to New York." 

The kind gentleman gave him a line to the captain to 
take the boy free to New York, and, when there, to 
place him in the care of a policeman to find his aunt, 
and also to see that he went to a good school, and to 
follow him up to higher schools, and he would pay all 
his bills for schooling, books, etc. A short time since, 
at a great Sabbath-school Convention out West, one of 
the best addresses was made by that boy (now a man) 
who loved his Bible so. — Bible Soc. Record. 



A BIBLE BAKED. 

There is a Bible in Lucas County, Ohio, which was 
preserved by being baked in a loaf of bread. It now 
belongs to a Mr. Schebolt, who is a native of Bohemia, 
in Austria. This baked Bible was formerly the prop- 
erty of his grandmother, who was a faithful Protestant 
Christian. During one of the seasons when the Roman 
Catholics were persecuting the Protestants in that 
country, a law was passed that every Bible in the hands 
of the people should be given up to the priests, that it 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 1 

might be burnt. Then those who loved their Bibles had 
to contrive different plans in order to try and save the 
precious book. When the priests came around to search 
the house, it happened to be baking day. Mrs. Sche- 
bolt, the grandmother of the present owner of this Bible, 
had a large family. She had just prepared a great batch 
of dough ; when she heard that the priests were coming, 
she took her precious Bible, wrapped it carefully up, 
and put it in the centre of a huge mass of dough, which 
was to fill her largest bread tin, and stowed it away in 
the oven and baked it. The priests came and searched 
the house carefully through, but they did not find the 
Bible. When the search was over, and the danger 
passed, the Bible was taken out of the loaf, and found 
un-injured. — Unitarian Herald. 



A PLEASING RECOLLECTION. 

Several years ago, when a school teacher was ' 'board- 
ing around," he formed a pleasant acquaintance with a 
Congregationalist family in the district. Shortly after 
this, a "little stranger" made his appearance in the 
family, and although they had several very likely child- 
ren before, they concluded to keep this one also. But # 
he had no name. After some discussion over the sub- 
ject, it was agreed that he should be called by the 
teacher's name. An old lady friend of the teacher some 



12 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

time after suggested that a gift be sent the little fellow 
to keep the custom good. 

But what should it be ? A dress would soon wear out. 
A knife ? Every boy wants a knife, but with a knife he 
would cut his fingers and then lose the knife. A book 
was next thought of, but as there was no end to making 
books, so it was not very easy to choose a book even 
for a child. At last a pocket Bible was sent, which the 
boy received, and as he grew up, loved to read. The 
first time that the teacher saw him again, he was en- 
gaged in a store, and on being introduced the young man 
said: "I have that Bible yet that you gave me." He 
had made it the Book of his life by giving God his heart 
and becoming a faithful member of a Congregational 
church. After this he went to the war, did what he 
could to defend the country, sickened and left for 
Heaven. The gift of a Bible to a child may be made a 
greater blessing than we at first suppose. — Rev. B. M. 
Genungj in The Methodist. % 



DO YOU READ YOUR BIBLE? 

It is the grand and noble work of the American Bible 
Society to supply the destitute every where with the 
Word of God, and it is their "hearts' desire and prayer 
to God" that all whom they furnish with it, and all oth- 
ers who have it, may search the Scriptures daily and de- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 3 

• 

voutly, to find in them eternal life ; and this they seek to 
secure by all their agents and publications. But how is 
the Bible neglected! How sinful and sad to have the 
light, but not come to it ! How severe will be the con- 
demnation of such ! A missionary of the American 
Sunday School Union writes : *■ 'At a certain place, I 
asked the man of the house, "Have you a Bible?" In 
anger he replied, "What, Mister! do you s'pose Fs a 
heathen? I's bin in the church ten years. Sally, git the 
Bible and let this man see it." After searching for 
some time, Sally finally found it ; and when the owner 
opened it he exclaimed, ' ' Wal, Mister, I'm glad you set 
us a hunten' up the Bible ; fur here's a letter I writ to 
my sister a year ago, and thought I'd sent it, and I've 
wondered, time and agin, why she never writ back." 
How much good was that Bible doing for that professor 
or his household during that year ? — Bible Society Record. 



A HIDDEN CHURCH. 

In the South of Spain, on the summit of a solitary 
mountain, is situated the town Izuatoraf, still surrounded 
by fosses and walls. Its name recalls the time when 
the Moors established themselves in Spain. Several 
years ago, a Colporteur climbed the mountain and ex- 
hibited in the market-place his merchandise — that is to 
say, his Bibles, New Testaments, and gospels. He was 



14 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

• 

soon surrounded by a great number of people, who looked 
at his books — some with hatred, others with curi- 
osity — for the rumor that a seller of heretical and per- 
nicious books had preceded the courageous messenger 
of the Bible. However, he was able to give some of his 
books to the peasants, and to tell them something of 
their contents. After that he went on his way. 

The Lord's promise was fulfilled, " My word shall not 
return unto me void." A man who could scarcely read 
had bought for 5 d. a copy of the Gospel of Matthew. 
His heart's desire was to read and understand the word 
of God without human explanations. But it was not an 
easy matter for him, for the little he had learned at 
school he had long forgotten. He began with pains 
anew to spell, and then to read slowly, and the Gospel 
of Matthew became his inseparable companion. The 
seed of the word received into his heart brought forth 
fruit not only in him but in fifty other men, to whom he 
had imparted his treasure. No pastor has gone to them. 
The word alone has separated them from the church of 
Rome. Every evening after their work, or even while 
working, they assembled to read and hear the word of 
God, and the Lord has not left himself without a witness 
among them by his Spirit. 

The existence of this little church has been revealed 
by the death of its founder. On the evening of the 20th 
January, 1874, several people met in a house in the little 
town to twist mats. One of them read aloud the word 
of God, while the others worked. The reader was he 
who had bought the Gospel. When it was late they 
retired, and the friends said to their leaders on leaving, 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 5 

"To-morrow, please God." "Yes, if the Lord will," 
was his answer. The next morning, a neighbor passing 
by the cottage of S. Paul Lopez (our brother), found the 
door open. She looked in and saw him on his knees, 
his arms spread out, and his head leaning on the edge 
of the table. She ran to give notice. The judge went 
with a doctor, and it was found that Lopez had died on 
his knees while praying. Happy prayer, that, begin- 
ning on earth, found its "amen" on high before the 
throne of God ! 

The tribunal ordered that the corpse of Lopez should 
be buried, but the priests refused him a place in the 
cemetery ; so the municipal council set apart ground in 
the open field as a burying place for Protestants, and 
the brethren of Lopez resolved to enclose this ground 
with a wall. In this way we obtained the first precise 
knowledge of the existence of the little church of Izna- 
toraf. — L Eglise Libte. 



PERSONAL SACRIFICE TO OBTAIN A BIBLE. 

A short time since, a young lady of cultivated man- 
ners came into the depository and inquired the price of 
Bibles. She said she wanted the finest Bible she could 
get for about two dollars. I showed her one at that 
price ; it suited her and she said she would take it and 
call in the afternoon for it. She returned in the after- 



1 6 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

noon looking very sad ; she looked at the Bible and 
asked me if I could not take less for it. I said, '.' I 
could not, as we sold them at cost price." I said, " We 
have cheaper Bibles, and if any one was destitute and 
too poor to purchase, we had Bibles to give." She 
replied, " If you knew the circumstances, perhaps you 
would take less than two dollars. This was the kind of 
a Bible that was wanted." She said she came twenty- 
five miles, and was acting for a lady friend who was in 
affluent circumstances before the war ; that she had lost 
all her Bibles and had not been able to procure one 
since ; that she wanted one so much, and of the kind 
selected ; had that morning cut her long and beautiful 
hair off, and sent it by her to be sold, and the proceeds 
to be invested in a Bible. That she had expected to 
realize at least two dollars for it, and that after visiting 
every place where they purchase such articles, she could 
only realize $1.25, and this was all that she could pay. 
I replied, " Most certainly, under such circumstances, 
the lady shall have the Bible." I then asked her if she 
had a Bible of her own. With a good deal of hesitancy 
she said she had not. I presented her with a Bible 
also. With many expressions of gratitude she left, 
declining to give the name of the lady who had sold her 
hair to purchase a Bible. — Correspon. of the Bible Society 
Record. 



Gleanings f 07' Bible Readers. ly 

A MOTHER'S GIFT. 

The night was bitterly cold, and the snowflakes came 
pouring down in quick succession on the deserted streets 
of a manufacturing town in the north of England. The 
busy hum of the day's work had ceased ; even the 
brawling, drunken men and women were no longer to 
be heard, and all was quiet and apparently lifeless. 
There was, however, the caricature of an existence yon- 
der. A poor boy, with a few filthy rags all but dropping 
from him, his face sadly woe-begone, and his whole ap- 
pearance one of the utmost misery, was attempting, by 
crouching on a door- step, to escape the chilly influence 
of the blinding storm. 

He was not long undisturbed, however. A police- 
man came that way on his nightly rounds, and as he 
turned the corner, he opened the bull's-eye of his lantern 
and thus caught sight of that poor little ragged, discon- 
solate lad. 

There was kindness in the eye of that police officer, 
and, if you had studied him closely, I am sure you 
would have said he had a tender heart, although, from 
the necessity of his position, his voice sounded some- 
what harshly. 

On nearing the boy he said, rather brusquely, " Now, 
boy, what are you doing there? Come, get up and 
go home ! " 

The boy replied, sadly, M I ain't got no 'ome, sir." 

" No home ? Why where's your father ? " 

" Father's dead, sir." 

" Where's your mother, then? " 



1 8 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

The boy again replied, with tears standing in his eyes, 
" Mother's dead, too, sir." 

The policeman, in a gentler tone of voice, said, 
" What! father and mother both dead, and no home! 
How do you live then ? " 

" I minds gentlemen's horses, and runs errands for 
the market people, and does all sorts of odd jobs. Some- 
times I gets a penny, or some broken victuals, and 
when I've twopence to spare I gets a night's lodging ; 
but I ain't earned nothing to-day, so I cant get it 
nowheres." 

The boy's replies were so artlessly given, and with 
such an air of truthfullness, that the kind nature of 
the officer was drawn out toward him. "My lad," he 
said, "I am only a poor man, and have several children 
of my own ; but I can't leave you to perish here this 
cold winter's night ; so get up and come with me, and 
for once you shall have a good warm supper, and a 
comfortable night's rest with my own family." 

The boy arose with joyful alacrity, and, gathering 
round his shrinking form the poor, thin jacket he wore, 
prepared to accompany his new friend. As he did so, 
however, a sudden change came over the countenance 
of the officer, and he looked suspiciously at the boy as 
he stood there ready to follow his protector whither he 
might take him. The practiced eye of the policeman 
had detected something concealed beneath the jacket 
the boy was wearing, and for a moment he feared he 
had been deceived by the pitiful tale he had just heard. 
Addressing the boy somewhat sternly, he said : 

" What's that you've got under your jacket? " 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 19 

" Please, sir, it's nothing wrong." 

" Give it to me at once." 

" Oh ! please don't take it away from me." 

The policeman said, very positively, " Now, boy, let 
me have no more nonsense, but give it up, " Then the 
little fellow very slowly and tremblingly took from 
under his jacket a much worn Bible, which no sooner 
met the eye of the police officer than a look of pleasure 
spread over his countenance. Wishing, however, to 
test the boy, he pretended not to observe the regret with 
which the lad extended the book toward him. Taking 
it, he said, " What's the good of this thing? Throw it 
away." 

The boy immediately exclaimed, in pleading, earnest 
tones, "Oh ! please sir, do let me keep my little Bible, 
it's what my mother gave me before she went to heaven ; 
and when she was dying, she told me to keep it for her 
sake, and the leaves you see turned down are the places 
she marked for me to read ; and every night, when I 
get by myself at the lodgings, or under the gas-lamps, 
I read this book, and it reminds me of my dear mother 
in heaven. It's the only comfort left me now, sir ; 
please let me keep my mother's little Bible." 

The policeman no longer doubting the story of the 
poor boy, took him to his home to share the comfort 
he had first promised him. On the following day he 
enlisted the sympathies of a gentleman known to inter- 
est himself on behalf of poor orphan children, and the 
poor fatherless, motherless, and homeless boy was put 
to school, educated, clothed and fed ; and when he had 
grown a young man (it is several years since this 



20 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

occurred) became a preacher of the gospel. Not very long 
since he went away to far distant lands to make known 
to the heathen the good tidings he had learned out of 
his mother's last gift — the little old pocket Bible he had 
so carefully preserved under his weather-worn jacket. 

Dear boys and girls, do you ever think how good and 
merciful God has been to you, giving you loving parents 
ever ready to deny themselves for your sakes, kind 
friends to cheer and assist you, happy school compan- 
ions, making the short period of youth a joyous one, 
and also his watchful care over yourself and them by 
day and night ? I hope you do ; at the same time re- 
membering that while you are in full possession of all 
necessary comforts, there are many, many poor children 
whose condition is as bad, or even worse, than was that 
of the young outcast whose story you have just read. 
But what I hope and pray for more earnestly, is that, 
like him, you may ever love and obey your parents, 
and in doing so you will find your reward, as we are 
told in the Old Book, the study of which I trust will 
always be your chief delight. — -John Langley in "Church 
and Home." 



HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH? 

How much is your Bible worth ? Scientific men are 
trying, to show us, through the newspapers, and through 



Gleanings* for Bible Readers. 21 

philosophical papers, that our race is descended from 
the monkey. — Get out with your abominable Darwinian 
theories ! Scientific men cannot understand the origin 
of this world. We open our Bibles, and we feel like 
the Christian Arab, who said to the skeptic when asked 
by him why he believed there is a God. " How do 
I know that it was a man instead of a camel that went 
past my tent last night ? Why, I know him by the 
tracks." Then, looking over at the setting sun, the 
Arab said to the skeptic, ' ' Look there ! that is not a 
work of a man. That is the track of a God. " We have 
all these things revealed in God's word. Dear old 
book ! My father loved it. It trembled in my mother's 
hand when she was nigh four-score years old. It has 
been under the pillow of three of my brothers when 
they died. It is a very different book from the book it 
once was to me. I used to take it as a splendid poem* 
and read it as I read John Milton. I took it up some- 
times as a treatise on law, and read it as I did Blackstone. 
I took it as a fine history, and read it as I did Josephus. 
Ah ! now it is not the poem ; it is not the treatise on 
law ; it is not the history — it is simply a family album 
that I open, and see right before me the face of God, 
my father ; of Christ, my saviour ; of Heaven, my eter- 
nal home. 

" How precious is the Book divine, 

By inspiration given ! 
Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine, 

To guide our souls to Heaven." 

As I take up my family Bible to-night, bright with 
promises, and redolent with boyhood memories, and 



21 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

mighty with principles that are to regenerate the world, 
I ask you, ye men who are descended from those who 
fought until they died in their tracks, for the defence of 
this book ; ye sons of the Covenanters, who were 
hounded among the highlands of Scotland ; ye sons of 
men who went on ladders of fire from English soil to 
Heaven, for this grand, glorious, triumphant, God-given 
book, - ' How much owest thou to my Lord. " — Talmage. 



FINDING A GIRL IN THE BIBLE. 

An English town missionary, a short time ago, related 
a remarkable incident. There was a lodging house in 
ihis district, which he had long desired to enter, but was 
deterred from so doing by his friend, who feared that his 
life would thereby be endangered. He became at length 
so uneasy that he determined to risk all consequences 
and try to gain admission. So one day he gave a some- 
what timid knock at the door, in response to which a 
coarse voice roared out, "Who's there?" and at the 
same moment a vicious looking woman opened the 
door and ordered the man to go away. "Let him 
come in, and see who he is and what he wants," growls 
out the same voice. The missionary walked in, and 
bowing politely to the rough-looking man whom he had 
just heard speak, said, "I have been visiting most of 
the houses in this neighborhood, to read with and talk 
to the people about good things. I have passed your 



Gleanings for Btble Readers. 23 

door as long as I feel I ought, for I wish also to talk 
with you and your lodgers." " Are you what is called 
a town missionary?" "I am sir," was the reply. 
"Well, then," said the fierce looking man, "sit down 
and hear what I am going to say. I will ask you a 
question out of the Bible. If you will answer me right, 
you may call at this house, and read and pray with us 
or our lodgers as often as you like ; if you do not 
answer me right, we will tear the clothes off your back, 
and tumble you neck and heels into the street. Now 
what do you say to that ? for I am a man of my word." 
The missionary was perplexed, but at length quietly 
said, " I will take you." " Well, then," said the man, 
' ' here goes. Is the word ' girl ' in any part of the Bible ? 
if so, where is it to be found, and how often ? That is 
my question." 

"Well, sir, the word 'girl' is in the Bible but only 
once, and may be found in the words of the Prophet 
Jeol, 3:3. The words are, ' And sold a girl for wine, 
that they might drink.' " 

" Well," replied the man, " I am dead beat; I durst 
have bet five pounds you could not have told." 

"And I could not have told yesterday, " said the 
visitor. For several days I have been praying that the 
Lord would open me a way into this house ; and this 
very morning, when reading the Scriptures in my family, 
I was surprised to find the word 'girl,' and got Concor- 
dance to see if it occurred again, and found it did not. 
And now, sir, I believe that God did know, and does 
know, what will come to pass, and surely his hand is in 
this for my protection and your good." 



24 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

The whole of the inmates were greatly surprised, and 
the incident has been over-ruled to the conversion of 
the man, his wife and two of his lodgers." — Bible 
Soc. Record. 



INFLUENCE OF GOOD WORDS. 

When Robert Moffat, the missionary, was in England, 
he told an amusing story of a poor African, who lived 
near one of the missionary settlements, and whose dog, 
by some accident, had got possesion of a Testament in the 
native language, and had torn it to pieces, devouring 
some of the leaves. This man came to the missionaries 
in great dismay, and laid his case before them. He 
said that the dog had been a very useful animal, and 
had helped to protect his property by guarding it from 
wild beasts, and also in hunting and destroying them ; 
but he feared it would now be useless. The missionary 
asked him how this was. As for the injury done, that 
was but an accident, and the Testament could be re- 
placed by another copy. "That is true," said the poor 
man, ' ' but still I am afraid the dog will be of no further 
use to me. The words of the New Testament are full 
of love and gentleness, and after the dog has eaten them 
it is not likely that he will hunt or fight for me any 
more." 

If such were the case, it would not always be deroga- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers, 25 

tory to a man to be called a beast ; but the words of 
the good Book do not always produce this excellent result 
upon men. The story shows how thoroughly the poor 
negro believed what he was told. — Bible Soc. Record. 



GOD'S SEED WILL COME TO GOD'S HARVEST. 

An aged lady relates the following incident : — After 

living many years away from the home of her youth, 

she had returned there in old age, and, widowed 

and childless, was spending the remnant of her days 

where her godly father had labored in the ministry for 

nearly half a century. There came one day to her door 

a venerable, dignified looking gentleman, who inquired, 

' 'Is there a daughter of Parson H living here?" 

On being answered in the- affirmative, he entered, saying 

that he had been searching for some member of the 

family, for he felt that he could not leave the place 

without seeing some relative of those to whom he felt 

under so great obligation. He then told her that, quite 

young, having no mother, and a father so addicted to 

drink that he could not take charge of his children, he 

went to live as a servant boy in her father's family. He 

was there carefully instructed in the things pertaining 

to God, but was perfectly indifferent to them. When 

the time came for him to go out and make his own way 
2 



26 Gleanings for Bible Readers, 

in the world, his mistress gave him a nice bundle of 
clothing, and upon opening it at night he found there a 
new Bible, upon the first page of which was written, with 
his name, the words, "Thou, God, seest me." As 
night after night he turned the leaves to read — again 
and again he saw these words written at the top of many 
a page. They took such possession of his mind, that 
when he was hard at work during the day he could not 
get them out of his thoughts ; and when tempted to sin, 
as he frequently was by his companions, the words, 
" Thou, God, seest me," made him turn away from 
their solicitations. His conscience gave him no rest, 
until, in humble confession of sin and reliance on 
the righteousness of the Saviour of sinners, he found 
peace in believing, and joined himself to the poeple of 
God. After that he removed to the far West, where 
he married a godly wife and was greatly prospered in 
business, Of his family of eleven children, every one, 
save the youngest, was a professing Christian, and his 
confidence in her conversion was unwavering. His 
children were all well educated and in prosperous cir- 
cumstances, bringing up their families in the fear of God, 
and exerting a strong influence for good in the several 
churches and communities with which they were con- 
nected. He had returned in his old age to visit the 
scenes of his youth, and especially longed to see the 
grave of her to whose thoughtful influence, under God, 
he owed his conversion, and to encourage her descend- 
ents to follow her example, and neglect no opportunity 
for doing good service in their Master's cause. 

What proof such an instance as this affords that great 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 27 

harvest will surely spring up from seeds sown in faith 
and love ! 

" Perchance the fruit is not to-day, 

For the quick growth has quick decay; 

But we shall sow and others reap, 

And they shall joy, though we may weep; 

Yet in the harvest shall 

Be gladness unto all." 

— Mother's Magazine. 



THE BIBLE IN MADAGASCAR. 

I have lately enjoyed the pleasure of seeing another 
sphere of labor in which the work of this society is car- 
ried on, and I will ask your kind attention to that just 
for a flew minutes. The society has done much for 
Madagascar. This society upheld the strength, and the 
faith, and the comfort of the persecuted Christians in 
those dark days when for six and twenty years they 
were forbidden to read the Bible. I have had the 
pleasure of seeing many of those places where they hid 
themselves away and worshiped in secret, or where, 
through persecutors, they were caused to suffer, and 
even to lay down their lives before their fellow-country- 
men. About fifteen months ago I was in one part of 
the country, and was asking the missionary who resides 
there, whereabouts it was that the martyrs used to 
gather. We had often heard of those gatherings, and 



28 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

one of his native evangelists, who stood by, said, ' 'Why, 
it is just here ; I can show you the spot." We all went 
with him, and he led us to a great group of enormous 
boulder rocks. He pointed out a little opening between 
those rocks. It was about two feet from the ground. 
We crept into it and then looked around ; and on the 
left, beneath a huge boulder, we feund that there was a 
little space of about fourteen or fifteen feet long, about 
three or four feet wide, and about two feet high — just 
such a space as we might find beneath a rather long din- 
ing- table. He said, "We used to meet here — ten, or 
twelve, or fifteen of us — on the Sabbath day, to read the 
word of God. On some occasions we were as many as 
forty in this little cave, and were particularly glad in 
our meetings when it rained, because we knew that the 
soldiers would not be coming after us." My Lord, the 
man who told us the story, was one of those who had 
done this. He was a noble Chiristian, brought to Christ 
when a boy. He had been most faithful in maintaining 
the gospel and spreading it among other people. He 
was sent down by the Prince of the day to make inquiry 
on the coast about some French Missionaries, but was 
seized and sold as a slave, and was sent by the Jesuit 
priests to the island of Bourbon, in order that he might 
be educated there, and so his life was preserved. But, 
my Lord, so attached was he to his own Bible, and so 
active was he in pceaching, teaching, and expounding 
the contents of the New Testament to the Malagasy 
people who were around him, that the fathers found him 
a most dangerous character, and shipped him back to 
Madagascar without delay. He has been a most faith- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 29 

ful friend to his brethren in the faith. He is looked up 
to as a father by them all. He saw his own relatives — 
the men and the women that had lived around him, and 
had worshipped in the boulder cave with him — led out to 
be burnt or to be thrown over a precipice. He saw 
many of them sold into chains ; he saw many of them at 
work, in after days, in the iron works at Mantasoa. 
Every where he had testimony of the hatred of the au- 
thorities against the word of God ; but he stood firm 
through it all. He has been the great helper of his 
brethren in the dark days, and he is their friend and 
faithful brother still. 

In regard to your own work, my colleague and myself, 
during our visit, had very pleasant evidence of the at- 
tachment which the Malagasy people have to the word 
of God. They had long been expecting a new edition 
of the Bible — an edition which was printed in London 
under the care of one of our missionaries, Mr. Tay, and 
at the expense of the Bible Society. For some reason 
or other the matter had been delayed, and it was long 
before the Bibles reached them. I am glad, for one 
thing, that there was a little delay in the matter, for I 
had the pleasure of seeing the arrival of the books, and 
seeing how they were treated. There was a perfect 
commotion, my lord, whelf the cases arrived. The case 
contained, each of them, eighty Bibles, and there was, 
altogether, an indent of some six thousand Bibles, which 
reached the capital in a few days. It was a serious 
question what the books should be sold for. We knew 
that they had not been inexpensive to you in London ; 
but we knew, also, that cash or silver money is a pecu- 



30 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

liarly valuable thing to the Malagasy. When I tell you 
what the rate of wages is in Madagascar, you will see 
in a moment that it must be so. I was highly amused 
at the different prices paid for things, during my visit. 
My own servant, for instance — a good Christian man 
and a member of the church — received from me personal 
wages and an allowance for food, and the sum total of 
the wages and the food, combined, amounted to eight 
shillings a month ; and, my lord, on that magnificent 
sum of eight shillings a month, he kept himself and his 
wife and two children, provided himself properly with 
clothes, as the Christians like to do, and subscribed sys- 
tematically and liberally to his church funds. Well, 
you see at once, that the missionaries had good reason 
for considering, that if they asked a shilling a copy for 
these Bibles, this would be to a Malagasy no trifling sum 
of money. But when the missionaries had decided that 
a shilling should be asked for it, the people all said, 
without the slightest hesitation : ' ' We are perfectly 
ready to pay!" Within a fortnight, the whole of that 
indent of six thousand Bibles was cleared out from the 
depository, . every copy being sold. There were con- 
stant and repeated demands for other copies, and I have 
no hesitation in thinking that a second indent of a sim- 
ilar number, that has since ar^ved, has also been entirely 
disposed of. 

Now, why was all this ? You know the story of the 
burning of the idols in 1869. You have heard of the 
great revival that the spirit of God had given to the re- 
ligious life of the Malagasy people — to the Christian 
people, and to those who were outside the church. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 31 

Well, that is a real revival ; there is a real spirit of in- 
quiry ; there is a real searching after God — not merely 
in the mind of a few, but in the minds of multitudes 
among- the Malagasy people; and we cannot forget, that 
" If thou shalt seek the Lord thy God thou shalt find 
Him, if thou seek Him with all thy heart." None shall 
ever seek the face of God, and the knowledge of God in 
Jesus Christ, without finding He is close at hand, and 
that He is willing to give to that inquiring and searching 
soul the enlightenment and the teaching, the comfort, 
and the consolation, of which every weary and sinful 
heart stands in need. And so the Malagasy have found 
it. Inquiring in the retired corners of the country, they 
find Him. All over the land they have built their chap- 
els. They meet every Sabbath ; they keep the day 
holy ; they sing their hymns ; they read the word of 
God. If in a village only a boy can be found who reads, 
that boy is at once put in requisition, that his reading 
powers may benefit all the people on the Sabbath day ; 
and, so in the lack of preachers in the retired parts of 
the country, they just cast themselves upon the best 
they can find — man or woman, girl or boy — in the most 
irregular, but the most delightful fashion. And God 
has honored their faith and honored their efforts. 

A circumstance happened, just before I visited Mada- 
gascar, that we cannot but think of with great pleasure. 
Four soldier's came up to the capital after a long journey. 
They were found by the superintendent of our press, 
Mr. Parrett, and they said that they had come from a 
province in the south-east of the island. They said : 
" some years ago, some of our officers came down from 



32 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

the capital, and they brought a New Testament with 
them, and we have service, and keep the Sabbath, and 
read the Bible ; but we have only two Bibles among us, 
and a few pages of the New Testament, and we have 
heard a distant rumor that at Antananariso there are 
riches of knowledge without end. We hear that there 
are here abundance of books and people who understand 
them, and people from whom we can learn new hymns 
and new tunes." "Well," Mr. Parrettsaid, ''you have 
came to the right place ; we can do everything for you." 
Bibles, hymn-books, Testaments, and other books were 
placed in their hands, and they were sent back to their 
corner of the country, happy and rejoicing. That was 
purely native effort; No Englishman had ever been 
there. The Malagasy had believed, therefore they had 
spoken, and the gospel had been spread. I have no 
doubt that something of that kind may be found among 
every branch and class of the civilized tribes of the island. 
While God is so working with us, by the Spirit from 
whom the book comes, we have nothing to do but to go 
forward to strengthen the hands of our native brethren, 
to preach and teach, and give them the book ; and then, 
what will the end be but glory to God in the highest, 
the conversion of souls, the building up of churches, and 
the evangelizing the entire people. — From the address of 
Dr. Mullens, at the Anniversary of the British and For- 
eign Bible Society. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 33 

WITNESSING THE TRUTH. 

The following beautiful illustration of the simplicity 
and the power of the truth is from the pen of S. H. 
Hammond, formerly editor of the Albany State Register. 
He was an eye-witness of the scene in one of the higher 
courts. 

A little girl, nine years of age, was offered as a wit- 
ness against a prisoner who was on trial for a felony 
committed in her father's house : 

" Now, Emly, " said the counsel for the prisoner, up- 
on her being offered as a witness, ' ' I desire to know if 
you understand the nature of an oath? " 

" I don't know what you mean," was the simple 
answer. 

"There, your honor," said the counsel, addressing 
the court, "is any thing further necessary to demon- 
strate the validity of my objection ? This witness should 
be rejected. She does not comprehend the nature of an 
oath." 

"Let us see," said the judge. "Come here my 
daughter." 

Assured by the kind tone and manner of the judge, 
the child stepped toward him, and looked confidingly 
up into his face, with a calm, clear eye, and in a manner 
so artless and frank that it went straight to the heart. 

" Did you ever take an oath?" inquired the judge. 
The little girl stepped back with a look of horror ; and 
the red blood mantled in a blush all over her face and 
neck as she answered, 

"No, sir." 



34 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

She thought he intended to inquire if she had ever 
blasphemed. 

"I do not mean that,"' said the Judge, who saw 
her mistake. "I mean, were you ever a witness 
before? " 

"No, sir ; I never was in court before." was the 
answer. 

He handed her the Bible open. 

"Do you know that book, my daughter?" 

She looked at it and answered, " Yes, sir, it is the 
Bible." 

"Do you ever read it? " he asked. 

"Yes, sir, every 7 evening." 

" Can you tell me what the Bible is? " inquired the 
judge. 

" It is the word of the great God," she answered. 

''Well, place your hand upon this Bible, and listen 
to what I say ; and he repeated slowly and solemnly the 
oath usually administered to witnesses. 

"Now," said the judge, "you have sworn as a wit- 
ness, will you tell me what will befall you if ySu do not 
tell the truth?" 

11 1 shall be shut up in the State Prison," answered the 
child. 

" Any thing else ? " asked the judge. 

" I shall never go to Heaven," she replied. 

" How do you know this? " asked the judge. 

The child took the Bible, and turning rapidly to the 
chapter containing the Commandments, pointed to the 
injunction, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against 
thv neighbor." "I learned that before I could read." 



Gleanings f 07' Bible Readers. 35 

" Has any one talked with you about being a witness 
in Court here against this man?" inquired the judge. 

"Yes, sir," she replied. " My mother heard they 
wanted me to be a witness, and last night she called me 
to her room, and asked me to tell her the Ten Com- 
mandments ; and then we kneeled down together, and 
she prayed that I might understand how wicked it was 
to bear false witness against my neighbor, and that God 
would help me, a little child, to tell the truth as it was, 
before him. And when I came up here with father she 
kissed me, and told me to remember the Ninth Com- 
mandment, and that God would hear every word that I 
said." 

" Do you believe this ? " asked the judge, while a tear 
glistened in his eye, and his lips quivered with emotion. 

"Yes, sir," said the child, with a voice and manner 
that showed her conviction of its truth was perfect. 

"God bless you, my child ! " said the judge ; " you 
have a good mother. This witness is competent," he 
continued. ' ' Were I on trial for my life, and innocent 
of the charge against me, I would pray God for such 
witnesses. Let her be examined." 

She told her story with the simplicity of a child as she 
was, but there was a directness about it which carried 
conviction of its truth to every heart. She was rigidly 
cross-examined. The counsel plied her with infinite and 
ingenious questioning, but she varied from the first state- 
ment in nothing. The truth as spoken by that little 
child was sublime. Falsehood and perjury had preceded 
her testimony. The prisoner had intrenched himself in 
lies until he deemed himself impregnable. Witnesses 



36 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

had falsified facts in his favor, and villainy had manu- 
factured for him a sham defence. But before her testi- 
mony falsehood was scattered like chaff. The little child 
for whom a mother had prayed for strength to be given 
her to speak the truth as it was before God, broke the 
cunning devices of matured villainy to pieces like a pot- 
ter's vessel. The strength that her mother prayed for 
was given her, and the sublime and terrible simplicity — 
terrible I mean to the prisoner and his associates — with 
which she spoke, was like a revelation from God him- 
self. 



HOW THE BIBLE GROWS ON US. 

If you come to Holy Scriptures with growth in grace, 
and with aspirations for yet higher attainments, the 
book grows upon you. It is ever beyond you, and 
cheerily cries, " Higher yet ! Excelsior ! ' : Many books 
.in my library are now behind and beneath me ; I read 
them years ago with considerable pleasure ; I have read 
them since with disappointment ; I shall never read them 
again, for they are of no service to me. They were 
good in their way once, and so were the clothes I wore 
when I was ten years old ; but I have outgrown them. 
I know more than these books, and know wherein they 
are faulty. Nobody ever outgrows the Scripture ; the 
book widens and deepens with our years. It is true, it 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 37 

can not really grow, for it is perfect; but it does so to 
our apprehension. The deeper you dig into Scriptures, 
the more you find that it is a great abyss of truth. The 
beginner learns four or five points of orthodoxy, and 
says, " I understand the Gospel ; I have grasped all the 
Bible." Wait a bit, and when his soul knows more and 
more of Christ, he will confess, " Thy Commandment is 
exceeding broad; I have only begun to understand it" 
— Spurgeon. 



LOVING THE BIBLE. 

Twenty-seven years ago, in the congregation of my 
first charge, was a lady whose love for the Bible was 
something remarkable. In the .confidence of a pastoral 
visit, she told me of her joy in the divine word, and 
also recited the incidents of her experience in this re- 
gard. She had formerly read her Bible, as so many do, 
a chapter now and a half-chapter then, without much in- 
terest or profit. She was even then most interested in re- 
ligious things. But her chief sources of spiritual strength 
were in such writings as those of Baxter, Payson and 
Robert Philip. It was her custom to read the Bible from 
duty, and then turn to those uninspired volumes for the 
kindling of higher devotion. For a good while this satis- 
fied her. But at length she came to feel grieved about 
it. She thought it a dishonor to God's word, that any 



38 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

book should be as interesting to her as the Bible. She 
tried to change this, but at first with little success. The 
Bible was still duty ; Baxter was pleasure and spiritual 
elevation. 

At length she could bear it no longer, so she took the 
case to God with strong crying. She told her Heavenly 
Father how greived she was that any book should rival 
the Bible in her affections. She asked this one thing — 
and she renewed her prayer every day — that her first 
delight might be in reading the word of God. I think 
it was some time before she felt that her request was 
granted. But at length the answer to her prayer was 
complete and marvelous. A strange light came over 
the sacred pages. A fascination held her to her Bible. 
She discovered a depth, a meaning, a curiosity, a charm, 
which were all new and most wonderful. Sometimes, 
when she had finished reading her Bible for the night, 
and had closed the book and moved toward her bed, 
she would go back again and enjoy the luxury of a few 
more verses. At the time of our interview she was 
thus delighting in the law of God. 

The conversation made an indelible impression on my 
mind. I remember it, after a long time, with vivid in- 
terest. It might be expected that such a Bible-lover 
would be foremost in every good word and work. She 
was an example in attendance upon the church services. 
Her mode of listening to a sermon was vastly encour- 
aging to her pastor. Her sympathy with the entire 
work of the church was most marked and influential. 
She was active and earnest, without any extravagance 
or enthusiasm. The very memory of such a helper 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 39 

* 
moves my heart with tender thankfulness. A pastor 
never out-lives the influence of such a parishioner. This 
Bereau type of piety in the pew is the strongest bulwark 
of the pulpit. It brings fidelity, sincerity, and what- 
ever else belongs to a loyal church member. 

I believe the experience of every pastor will justify 
the statement that by such things we live, and that we 
can always lean with confidence upon those who find 
God's precepts " sweeter than honey. " — Rev. Fred. G. 
Clark, D. D. , in the New York Observer. 



THE BIBLE. 

Who composed the following description of the Bible 
we may never know. It was found in Westmnister 
Abbey, nameless and dateless ; but, nevertheless, it is 
invaluable for its wise and wholesome counsel to the 
race of Adam : 

A nation would be truly happy if it were governed 
by no other laws than those of this blessed Book. 

It contains everything needful to be known or done. 

It gives instruction to a senate ; authority and direc- 
tion to a magistrate. 

It cautions a witness, requires an impartial verdict of 
a jury, and furnishes the judge with his sentence. 

It sets the husband as the lord of his household,- and 
the wife as misstress of the table — tells him how to rule, 
and her how to manage. 



40 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

It entails honor to parents, and enjoins obedience on 
children. 

It prescribes and limits the sway of the sovereign, the 
power of the ruler, and the authority of the master; 
commands the subject to honor, and the servant to 
obey, and promises the blessing and protection of the 
Almighty to all that walk by this rule. 

It gives directions for weddings and burials. 

It promises food and raiment, and limits the use of 
both. 

It points out a faithful and eternal Guardian to the 
departing husband and father ; tells him with whom 
to leave his fatherless children, and whom his widow is 
to trust ; and promises a father to the former and a hus- 
band to the latter. 

It teaches a man to set his house in order, and how 
to make his will ; it 'appoints a dowry for his wife, and 
entails the rights of the first born, and shows how the 
young branches shall be left. 

It defends the rights of all, and reveals vengeance to 
every defaulter, over-reacher, and trespasser. 

It is the first book, the best book. 

It contains the choicest matter, gives the best instruc- 
tion, affords the greatest degree of pleasure and satis- 
faction that we have ever enjoyed. 

It contains the best laws and most profound myster- 
ies that were ever penned ; and it brings the very best 
comforts to the inquiring and disconsolate. 

It is a brief recital of all that is to come. 

It settles all matters in debates, resolves all doubts, 
and eases the mind and conscience of all their scruples. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 4 1 

It reveals the only loving and true God, and showing 
the way to Him, sets aside all other gods, and describes 
the vanity of them and all that trust in such ; in short, 
it is a book of laws to show right and wrong — of wis- 
dom, that condemns a folly and makes the foolish wise ; 
a book of truth, that detects all lies and confronts all 
errors ; and a book of life that shows the way from 
everlasting death. 

It contains the most ancient antiquities, strange 
events, wonderful occurrences, heroic deeds, and unpar- 
alleled wars. 

It describes the celestial, terrestial, and infernal 
worlds, and the origin .of the angelic myriads, the 
human tribes, and the devilish legions. 

It will instruct the most accomplished mechanic, and 
the most profound scholar. 

It teaches the best rhetorician, and exercises every 
power of the most skillful arithmetician, puzzles the 
wisest anatomist, and confounds the subtlest critic. 

It is the best covenant that ever was agreed on ; 
the best deed that ever was sealed — the best that ever 
will be signed. — Bible Soc. Record. 



ABOUT A BIBLE IN A HOTEL. 

A small party of friends gathered about a cosy tea- 
table, were discussing the propriety of the Bible Society 
placing copies of the Holy Scriptures in railroad cars, 
steamers, hotels and other places of public resort. 

4 



42 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

One or two of this party raised the objection to the 
practice that in such public places the Bible often re- 
ceived rude and careless treatment at the hands of 
irreverent and irreligious persons. 

After all the rest had expressed an opinion, a woman, 
the sweet graces of whose Christian character gave her 
a wide reaching influence in the village, related this 
touching incident of personal experience: — 

It seems that two or three years after her conversion 
and union with the church, troubles came upon her and 
her family. Instead of bearing trials with patience and 
submission, she lost her faith in the goodness of God, 
in His ever-watchful care, doubted the genuineness of 
her conversion, ceased to pray, to read her Bible, or 
even to think of seeking Divine guidance. 

While in this pitiable state, circumstances made it 
imperative for her to visit the city of New York on a 
very painful matter of business. She was of a retir- 
ing disposition, unused to traveling, and had never 
been in a large city. 

While on her journey, in the cars, a slight act of 
courtesy led her to make the acquaintance of a gentle- 
man and his wife who took her under their protection, 
and after their arrival in the city, went out of their way 
to leave her at the entrance of a respectable hotel. She 
ascended the stairs, oppressed with an almost over- 
whelming sense of loneliness, mingled with the con- 
sciousness of an utter inability to perform the unpleas- 
ant errand she had in hand. On being ushered into the 
capacious and elegantly furnished parlors, she walked 
mechanically to a center table, and opening the single 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 43 

book which lay upon the marble top, her eye fell upon 
these words: "I will never leave thee nor forsake 
thee." 

An emotion of tenderness, born of her old time love 
of God and trust in his promises, suddenly stole into her 
heart. Still bending over the precious book, the gath- 
ering tears beginning to dim her eyes, she read further 
on — " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day and for- 
ever." The comfort which these passages of scripture 
brought to her it was impossible to describe. The 
black clouds of unbelief and doubt suddenly but quickly 
rolled away. The glorious sunlight of Divine love and 
protection shone in upon her soul, and the bow of 
promise seemed to span the arch through which she 
looked toward the benificent days that were near at 
hand. She was no longer alone ; and this assurance 
came to her heart like a balm and a blessing. Her 
perturbed and distracted mind was at rest now ; the by- 
gone joy, peace, and trust sat again upon the throne of 
her heart and held more potent, loving sway than ever. 
"Jesus Christ y the same yesterday, to-day \ and forever!" 
she kept saying to herself over and over. 

Perfectly quieted and self-poised, now, she gave her 
orders with the assurance of an experienced traveler. 
She ate a hearty supper, went to her room, and in time 
to her bed, with as great a sense of security as if she 
had been in her own house. She slept peacefully, and 
awoke at her usual time in the morning, thoroughly re- 
freshed. Unexpected facilities for transacting her 
trying business opened up on all sides. She was uni- 
formly treated with respect. Her questions were 



44 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

promptly answered. She was marvelously aided in her 
request, and her' mission proved successful. Had it not 
been for the copy of the Bible found so opportunely in 
her pathway, she was sure she would have taken the 
next train home, without making an effort even toward 
the accomplishment of her mission. The Bible in the 
hotel was in the right place. — Mrs. Annie A. Preston, in 
tlu. American Messenger. 



WHY IS THE BIBLE SO LITTLE READ ? 

We deal with this as a "live question," a question 
not only of to-day, but for us who admit in terms the 
value of the Scriptures, who stand up for the Bible, 
who allege that ' ' man lives by the Word of the Lord, ' ' 
who make resistance to all attempts to lower or belittle 
the Bible. Why do we, who own and worship in 
churches, and support ministers to lay Bible truth 
before us, study it so little for ourselves? Why do we 
support Bible Societies — hold out the book as the best 
gift we can offer men, and yet make so little of it for 
our own part ? The following causes seem to operate 
in this direction : — 

i. A mistake as to the activity in benevolent work, 
which is so happy a feature of our time. Professing 
Christians are very busy. Christian work is pressed on 
them. It has some natural attractions. A little stir, con- 
sequence, and pleasant contact with amiable fellow-men 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 45 

attend it. There is an agreeable consciousness of laud- 
able and beneficent action. Men, as they sometimes 
say, " enjoy themselves in it," and unwittingly they 
utter a deep truth. They " enjoy themselves." Arti- 
ficial attractions are, besides, lent to this Christian work. 
Ministers and others are glad to encourage laborers. 
Reports are usually rose-colored. Christian laborers are, 
from their very amiability, inclined to mutual adulation. 
The general tendency to make the most of things is not 
wanting here. I have heard men described as doing a 
' ' grand work, " whose results, one fears, will not bulk 
largely in the day when " the fire shall try every man's 
work, of what sort it is." All this being so, there is great 
danger of substituting activity without for personal 
growth within ; and all the more, because the activity is 
recommended as a means of grace. It is a means of 
grace along with others, not by itself. We are busy 
about religious things, so we think ourselves religious. 
We are not, to be sure, meditating on God's law, or 
holding our hearts in communion with Him, but we are 
writing or hearing sermons, carrying on the societies, 
and doing Christian work. Now, a good doctor must 
keep abreast of the literature of his profession. A good 
lawyer must keep his eye on legislation and decisions 
elsewhere than in his own court. A good minister must 
take in as well as give out. A banker will require de- 
posits to keep pace with drafts. And a good Christian 
worker must be replenished from the fountain of truth 
and love, if he is to be a growing Christian. Christian 
laborers, when your outward activity outruns your spir- 
ituality, you are in danger. 



46 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

2. The abundance of good literature becomes a snare 
to us. We wish to be, and seem, well-informed. We 
desire to keep up our acquaintance with the product of 
the best minds. We cannot ignore the newspapers, 
magazines, and books of the period. And if we have 
Sabbath time, the religious papers and monthlies absorb 
it. They are, many of them, excellent ; and we have, 
besides, a good Christian literature, in sermons, biogra- 
phies, and treatises without end. These supplant, in 
some degree, the word of God itself. 

Nor is it hard to see why. As far as they are good, 
these productions tell the very truth that is in the Bible. 
But we stand in a different relation to the writers when 
we read them from that which we occupy when we read 
our uninspired authors. With the latter we are the 
judges. They are trying to please us. We wish to see 
"how they do it." We criticise style, manner and 
matter. We indulge a certain curiosity. We are um- 
pires between contending divines. Our self-love is flat- 
tered ; our taste is appealed to and pleased ; our curios- 
ity is tickled, and we are gratified. 

But all this is changed when we read the Bible. God 
speaks. We are not there to criticise, indulge our tastes, 
or aught else, but to be in subjection to the Father of 
spirits. We are learners, not umpires ; we are pupils, 
not authorities. Hence the fact that, with the Bible 
and a volume of disquisitions on its mountains or its 
miracles lying on the table, many a Christian will take 
up the human and pass by the Divine. 

tl But," one may say, "you omit an element in the 
case — novelty. I know the Bible already. The other 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 47 

volume I do not know ; and having already read the 
Bible, why go over it again ? " 

Without pausing to inquire how truly you do know 
the Bible, let the other point be examined. Why is 
Scripture given us, and to be meditated upon ? Surely, 
among other objects, to form character. Now, how is 
character formed? Let an answer be given by two 
illustrations — one from art, one from social life. On 
our table, perhaps, is " cut-glass." You could not, with 
your knife, mark that glass ; but the ornaments cut out 
of its substance were produced by innumerable particles 
of finest sand thrown against it with force, till they had 
made impressions that can only be destroyed with glass 
itself. So it is by the frequent forcible contact of the 
lessons of the Divine Word with the mind, that charac- 
ter is formed. So the Word " dwells" in us. Is not 
this the theory of devout reading? the principle of 
meditation on truth? the ground for maintaining and 
attending preaching? Once more: Have you not 
known persons talked into a plan to which they were 
averse, but to which, by constant iteration and reitera- 
tion, the mind is brought around ? So the continual 
urging ol wives, of friends, of associates, of one's set, 
influences men not remarkably weak. It is not the 
force, but the frequency of the appeal, that tells. The 
attention of the mind is compelled to a theme that fills 
up all the horizon of vision. Now, on the same princi- 
ples, we ought to let God speak to us constantly, and 
influence our minds. 

"But this is not complimentary to our intellects." 
Perhaps not. Scripture does not pay compliments, but 



4-3 Gleaimigs for Bible Readers. 

discloses the truth of things ; yet, if you will think of 
it, the principle on which all education, intellectual and 
moral, proceeds, is the constant keeping before the 
mind what it is desired to absorb and retain. Hence it 
follows that while one reading is enough for Macauley, 
Bulwer. or Bancroft, the Bible ought to be read con- 
stantly, over and over again ; and it is no mean testi- 
mony to its inspiration that minds, content with one 
perusal of the best human compositions, find in it fresh 
beauties and new lights, with each successive reading. 

3. Practical ignorance of the value of the Scriptures ac- 
counts for its neglect. Remember the significant inter- 
view between Pilate and Christ (John, 18:36-57 : ' My 
kingdom is not from hence," says the prisoner at the 
bar. ' ' Ah ! you are a king, then ? " says Pilate. ' ' Yes, 
you have said it ; a King I am," says the prisoner. " I 
was born, and am here for this end, that I might wit- 
ness to the truth. Ever}- one that is of the truth hear- 
eth my voice.'' " What is truth?" said the skeptical 
politician, turned on his heel, and closed the interview. 

But let us hear what he refused. " Everyone that is 
of the truth heareth Me." " The truth " is not a part}-. 
What then, does He mean? Some truth had been re- 
vealed already ; such as human sin, darkness, and need 
of light and life. Some were of that truth, and heard 
Christ. Some were not of it, and they rejected Him. 
Pharisees did not believe that truth. They could de- 
velop men into all their goodness, and they were im- 
movable in their self-complacency. Publicans and sin- 
ners believed the truth, and they received Jesus. And 
it is so still. Multitudes do not care for the Bible, be- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 49 

cause, though they receive it conventionally, they are 
not of the truth. They do not, in heart, realize the facts 
that lie at its very basis, " the truth " regarding them- 
selves and their needs. They are self-satisfied. Sin is 
little or nothing to them, 'till it robs their safe, or vio- 
lates the sanctity of their homes. Truth is nothing to 
them, except as it respects stocks and investments. 
They shrug their shoulders when God's measure of right 
and wrong is referred to, as though they said; "Non- 
sense ! a man of the world cannot be so particular." 
They are not of the truth, and when the revelation that 
recognizes our fall, guilt, and need of pardon and life, 
comes to them, it awakens no response and finds no 
welcome. They are like Pilate, minding themselves, 
taking care of their own position and prospects ; and this 
clamor about a kingdom of truth is, to them, an im- 
pertinence. 

4. Finally, men do not use the Scriptures aright, be- 
cause they are not bent on living by them. And they 
are not so bent because they do not know Jesus Christ. 
He said: " If ye love Me, ye will keep My words. " But 
they do not love Him. They are not bound to this Di- 
vine, all-glorious Person. He is nothing to them. So 
His words are of little account. He means that we should 
see Him ; hence we have the fourfold picture of the 
Gospel, and know Him, and be attracted to Him, that 
we should treasure His words, that we may do them. 
Men do not listen, because they have not looked. For, 
here is, in a nutshell, evangelical morality. Jesus de- 
mands all our life. If He were not Divine, the claim 
would be impious. He demands all our love. If He 



50 Gleanings for Bible Readers, 

had not shown the utmost conceivable love for us, the 
return would be undue and extravagant. But He is 
Divine, and He has given us love without parallel. He 
has a right to be loved and obeyed in all our life. His 
words are with us. If we would obey them, we must 
keep them ; we must live by them. Not a casual 
reading, but a constant reference to them is required ; 
and each successive duty comes to us, hard or ungrateful, 
as it may be, and as our love of ease moves us away 
from it, hearing the words of Jesus, we are to face it, 
even as if we heard from the loving lips, themselves. 
" This do in remembrance of Me." — Rev. John Hall, D. 
D., New York, in Presbyterian. 



WORKING FOR JESUS. 

A preacher in England was once talking about the 
heathen, and telling how much they needed Bibles to 
teach them of Jesus. In the congregation was a little 
boy, who became intensely interested. He wished to 
help buy Bibles for the heathen. But he and his 
mother were very poor, and at first he was puzzled to 
know how to raise the money. 

Finally he hit upon a plan. The people of England 
use rubbing or door stones for polishing their hearths 
and scouring their wooden floors. These stones are bits 
of marble or freestone begged from the stone-cutters or 
marble-workers. 



I 

Gleanings for Bible Readers. 5 1 

This little boy had a favorite donkey named Neddie. 
He thought it would be nice to have Neddie help in the 
benevolent work. So he harnessed him up and loaded 
him with stones, and went around calling: 

" Do you want any door-stones ? " 

Before long he raised fifteen dollars ; and then he 
went to the minister and said : 

"Please, sir, send this money to the heathen." 

' ' But, my dear little fellow, I must have a name to 
acknowledge it." 

The lad hesitated, as if he did not understand. 

" You must tell me your name," repeated the minis- 
ter, " that we may know who gave the money." 

' 'Oh, well then, sir, please put it down to Neddie and 

me ; that will do, won't it, sir?" — Bible Soc. Record. 

m 



WHAT THE BIBLE IS. 

Aside from our interest in the Bible as our spiritual 
teacher, it is a book of priceless value in an intellectual 
point of view, to all cultivated minds. 

It is a book of history, containing the earliest records 
of the human race which have came down to our times, 
and every new discovery among the monuments of an- 
cient civilizations confirms its truth. 

It is a book of poetry. Its sublime strains have never 
been equaled by the Greek, Roman, or English muse. 



$2 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

Milton drew from the Bible the story of "Paradise 
Lost," and much of its choicest thoughts and most felic- 
itous expression. Without the Bible, "Paradise Lost " 
could not have been written. 

It is a book of allegories and parables ; and from these 
John Bunyan, the greatest of uninspired allegorists, 
learned those lessons of Christian experience which he 
clothed in the language of common life, and made a 
book that will not die. Without the Bible " Pilgrim's 
Progress " could not have been written. 

It is a book of law. Christian nations are scarcely 
aware how much their jurisprudence is indebted to the 
Bible for its superiority over that of heathen nations. 
Its precepts lie at the foundation of their municipal and 
international codes. They constitute that higher law 
of which Hooker saidh "Her throne is the bosom of 
God, and her voice the harmony of the world." 

The Bible is a teacher of morals. If its moral pre- 
cepts were collected and arranged in the order of sub- 
jects, we should have a better text-book of moral sci- 
ence than any author has prepared for the schools. 
There is no virtue which it does not inculcate, no vice 
which it does not denounce. 

The Bible is a book of philosophy. Its very first 
sentence solves two problems, which philosophers 
groped in the dark a thousand years to answer, and 
failed. Scientists who reject revelation still wrestle with 
the same problems, and fail to find a satisfactory solu- 
tion. These problems are God and the Universe. " In 
the beginning God " — what imagination can go back to 
the beginning of infinite duration ? If such flight were 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 53 

possible, what should we find ? God, the self-existent 
Being, without beginning of days or end of life. In the 
beginning God, the Creator, the intelligent contriver 
and maker of all things visible and invisible. " In the 
beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 

The Bible solves the question of man's origin. God 
made man in his own image. They who delight to 
trace their lineage from the gorilla and ape, and through 
a preceding ancestral line to a tadpole, and through the 
tadpole to a monad, and through the monad to dead 
matter made protoplastic they know not how, reject the 
patent of nobility wnich the Bible proffers to them as 
the Divine handiwork — the moral image of God — and 
claim no inheritance after the present life but to mingle 
with the dust from which they sprung. The Bible sets 
the seal of falsehood on all such theories of man. Man 
is a creation — a creature of God, who breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul. 

But more and better than its history, poetry, law, and 
philosophy, far better than all that may be called the 
intellectual excellence of the Bible, there stands the 
crowning glory of the book to Christian minds and 
hearts — the revelation of the grace of God through 
Jesus Christ. The voice of the heavenly host, heard on 
Judea's hills, proclaiming "peace on earth, good will 
toward men," has sounded ever since from the pages of 
that book, and will sound evermore. Faith alone, 
steadfast faith in Christ, enables the soul to triumph over 
death and the grave, while it looks for ' ' a city that hath 
foundations, whose builder and maker is God." 

Blessed and precious book, freighted with the love of 



54 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

God to men, and with promises of the bliss of Heaven ! 
Thanks be to God for this, His unspeakable gift! — From 
an Address delivered by W. H. Allen, LL. D. , President 
of the Am. Bible Society. 



th£ infidel and his dying wife. 



You never know what the Bible is until you take it as 
your own, coming direct from God to you. I was once 
called to visit a dying lady, in the city of Philadelphia, 
of an English family. She and her husband were in a 
boarding-house there. I spent much time with her, 
knelt often in prayer with her, and with great delight. 
Her husband was an Atheist, an English Atheist — a 
cold-hearted, bloated English Atheist. There is no 
such being beside him on the face of the globe. That 
was her husband. On the day in which that sweet 
Christian woman died, she put her hand under the pil- 
low and pulled out a little, beautiful, well-worn English 
Bible. She brought out that sweet little Bible, worn 
and thumbed, and moistened v/ith tears. She called 
her husband andjie came, and she said, "Do you know 
this little book ? " and he answered, " It is your Bible , " 
and she replied, ''It is mf Bible; it has been every 
thing to me ; it has converted, strengthened, cheered, 
and saved me. Now I am going to Him that gave it to 
me, and I shall want it no more ; open your hands " — 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 55 

and she put it in between his hands and pressed his two 
hands together : " My dear husband/do you know what 
lam doing?" "Yes, dear, you are giving me your 
Bible." "No, darling, I am giving you your Bible, and 
God has sent me to give you this sweet book before I 
die ; put it in your hands ; now put it in your bosom — 
will you keep it there? will you read it for me ? " "I 
will, my dear." 

I placed this dear lady, dead, in the tomb behind my 
church. Perhaps three weeks afterward, that big 
bloated Englishman came to my study, weeping pro- 
fusely. "Oh my friend," said he, "my friend! I have 
found what she meant — I have found what she meant — 
it is my Bible ; oh ! it is my Bible ; every word in it was 
written for me. I read it over day by day ; I read it over 
night by night ; I bless God it is my Bible. Will you 
take me into your church, where she was? " "With 
all my heart" — and that proud, worldly, hostile man, 
hating this blessed Bible, came, with no arguments, with 
no objections, with no difficulties suggested, with no 
questions to unravel, but binding it upon his heart of 
memory and love. It was God's message of direct sal- 
vation to his soul, as if there were not another Bible in 
Philadelphia, and an angel from Heaven had brought him 
this. 

There we stand. The Bible is God's Bible, given to 
man, proclaiming full salvation. The Bible is man's 
Bible, the moment that he thus receives it from God. 
The giving of that Bible is the duty of the Church of 
God, and the Church of God has comparatively, no 
other duty until that duty is done. Go into all the 



56 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

world, preach-the gospel, carry it with you, give it to 
everybody on the face of the whole world, until the har- 
vest of the earth shall be reaped, and the Lord God 
Omnipotent shall reign, King of kings, and Lord of 
lords. — From an Address by Dr. S. H. Tyng y Bible Soc. 
Record. 



READ THE BIBLE— READ IT ALL. 

If anybody does not believe the Bible, he has never 
read it through ; he may have read a little here and 
there, with general commentaries and criticisms be- 
tween, but he has not read the whole. Once two men 
said, "We will disprove the conversion of Paul." 
They read it through and wrote a book in proof of it. 
So will God deal with all destructive critics, who really 
make themselves masters of the situation they intended 
to overthrow. 

It is wonderful, if you read the whole, how it gets 
hold of you somewhere. I have tried it; and I appeal 
to you who know it best, whether you will willingly let 
it drop out of your fingers when it has once got into the 
movement and necessity of your being. 

Suppose you should ask a man to read this book clean 
through at one sitting. What would his notions be ? I 
do not ask him the memory of particular texts, but I 
would say, "What are your general notions?" I 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 57 

should not be surprised to hear him say, "It is a very 
solemn book. There were deep soundings in it that made 
me shudder with a chill the like of which I never felt be- 
fore." 

What more? "The infinite reluctance with which 
God gives up man, that struck me in reading the book 
from end to end. The pain, the yearning of God, the 
moan of a mother, the cry of a broken heart — it was 
very wonderful. I felt, in reading it, as if God were 
putting out both his arms, straining his eyes after me, 
and crying out to me, ' Come back ! ' I cried at some 
parts of it myself; I forget, just now, where they were, 
but I think you will find the tears on the pages here and 
there even yet. It seemed as if God was saying : 
1 Image of my countenance, upright like myself, sus- 
pective of immortality, companion of my life, wrecked 
and shattered, wounded and dying, yet how can I give 
thee up ? Ye were not made for death ; why will 
ye die?'" 

What more ? "I remember it was a righteous book. 
There were pages in it where the wicked man had his 
own way ; but presently God searched him out and 
brought him to judgment. It made me glad, and in the 
middle of my reading I thought, ' Would that the book 
were at the basis of all political legislation — at the heart 
of all commercial enterprise ; would that it were the 
secret of all civilization, and the inspiration of all do- 
mestic and national life. ' 

" And I remember this about it, that it seems to be all 
other books. I have read a great many books, and I feel 
now that I need not have read them ; they are all here. 
5 



58 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

Novels — it is all there in the Prodigal Son. Two men, 
the runaway son, the scapegrace, the far country, the 
riotous living, the harlot, the evil companionships, the 
bad treatment, and the coming home again. Joy ! I 
never heard such silver bells ringing in my life as the 
chimes in this book. Sorrow ! None like it. Its woes 
swallow up all other grief. Its cross, like the rod of 
Moses, swallows up all other crosses in its great tragic 
sorrow. 

" But are there not some terrible things in that book 
of yours ? " " Yes, there are. There are stories in the 
book that no minister dare read in the congregation. 
There are chapters that no publisher could take out 
separately and put in the shop window. Yes; but 
1 blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, ' 
even in that shame. These stories are in their right 
place in the Bible, surrounded by the lightnings and 
thunders of judgment in the Old Testament, and by the 
tears and tenderness, and touching death on the cross, 
in the New — all that is unfolded in the. word Redemp- 
tion." 

Do not vindicate the Bible, if you please ; let it 
alone. It needs no vindication ; it is there. It has 
been assailed ; still it is there. It has been assailed 
from points from which it does not start. It does not 
contemplate the things which have been turned into 
means of assault against it. Suppose a man should say, 
" An alkali neutralizes an acid, therefore the New Tes- 
tament is not inspired ; " what would you think of it? 
Suppose a man should say, ' ' Two and two are four, 
therefore there can be no resurrection from the dead." 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 59 

Why, there is no link of connection — nothing to bring 
them together. So it is ; the Bible has its own work , 
it starts from its own point — delivers its own message. 
It is not a book that comes within the region of logic, 
but of feeling, sorrow, want, imagination. 

But does not the Apostle Paul reason ? Not as if he 
wished to prove the existence of the thing, but in the 
sense that a man turns a diamond round and shows all 
its angles and sides, and beautiful proportions, not as if 
he would prove that it is a diamond. So Paul turns the 
truth round, that every phase of it may catch the sun. 
He never lays it down as a thesis or proposition that 
there is a God. So with this book. It does not say, 
" I am inspired, and I will rjrove it; " it simply says, 
" Read me, andVead me all." 

I want to remind you that it is possible to read a part 
as if it were the whole ; to make too much of certain 
texts, and forget their bearing upon others, and so miss 
the proportion and analogy of faith. The man who 
takes out a solitary text and founds a denomination on 
it is not Biblical, but only textual. He is not a states- 
man, only a politician. He takes out a single line, ex- 
aggerates it, and does not consider its relationship to 
the manifold infiniteness of the remaining revelation. 

I can prove by geography that the world is not round ; 
that is to say, by taking a partial and local view of the 
surface of the earth, I can defy any man to prove that 
it is round. There are great rocky points, great crags 
and rocks shooting up into the air, some ten thousand 
feet high, others fifteen thousand and more. Then 
there are great valleys, sinking as deeply into the ribs 



60 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

and heart of the earth. Looked at in this light, no 
proposition can be more monstrous than that the earth 
is round. But you must not look at the part, but 
at the whole. You must look at astronomy. The 
greater includes the less, and thus you proceed to es- 
tablish the rotundity of the earth. So you must not 
look at the parable or text; "let the word of Christ 
dwell in you richly." — Rrc. Joseph Parker, D. D., of 
London. 



I 

TRIED AND PROVED. 

An aged widow was meditating upon the faithfulness 
and love of God, with her Bible open before her. It 
was an old Bible — a very old one — which bore the marks 
of constant handling ; but it was a very precious one to 
its owner, not only because it had been her mother's 
Bible, but because in it she had for many years been 
accustomed to seek for the comfort which she could 
find nowhere else. So this one holy book was dear to 
her heart, and a treasure in her home. And so familiar 
was she with its contents that she knew where to find 
almost any passage she desired. 

Throughout her Bible there were many words and 
marks, which she had written with her pencil, the most 
numerous of which were "T." and " P." 

While the widow was thus occupied, her meditation 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 61 

was interrupted by the presence of a visitor, who, see- 
ing the, open Bible before her, made some observations 
respecting the preciousness of its contents, and on turn- 
ing over some of its leaves in order to find a passage 
which had been referred to, saw " T." and "P. " writ- 
ten in several places upon the 'margin, and therefore 
took the liberty of asking what it meant. 

The widow's reply was simple and beautiful. She 
said : That means tried and proved. For many years 
past I have come to this Bible for instruction and com- 
fort, and have always found what I sought. It has 
^ever failed me. It was in its blessed pages that, through 
the Holy Spirit's help, I discovered myself to be a lost 
and ruined creature ; a sinner by nature and practice ; 
exposed to the displeasure of the best of Beings, without 
being able to save myself; and here also I learned that 
Jesus was mighty to save. I read His own gracious 
words of invitation . " Come unto Me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. " I believed 
that He meant what He said. In prayer and desire I 
sought for mercy. I cast my helpless soul, upon Him, 
and found salvation, became renewed in heart and life, 
found the rest He had promised, and proved His faith- 
fulness ; and against that invitation and promise I in- 
scribed my first T. and P. 

" He promised his disciples that if they asked they 
should receive. I have asked Him for numerous bless- 
ings, and He has never allowed me to ask in vain. I 
became a widow, and my children were fatherless. My 
heart was full of bitterness and sorrow. I read these 
blessed words : "Leave thy fatherless children, I will 



62 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

preserve them alive ; and let triy widows trust in Me. 
■* A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, 
is God in His holy habitation." Committing myself 
and my children to His care, I found God was faithful ; 
and here in both cases you see I have written T. 
and P. 

"Troubles and sorrows of various kinds have assailed 
me, yet in the midst of all I have never been left desti- 
tute, uncomforted or unprotected. I have trusted in 
the Divine promise, and have ever found it fulfilled. I 
have humbly endeavored to walk by its precepts, and 
have always found my steps wisely directed and safely 
guarded. I have based my faith upon its statements, 
and have never found them fail me ; therefore my re- 
corded T's. and P's. are my testimonies to the faithful- 
ness of my Father in heaven. And the book whose 
promises have been so richly fulfilled in my experience 
in this life, will be as worthy of my confidence in respect 
to all the future life, on which it has caused my soul to 
hope, and, therefore, this Holy Bible is precious to my 
soul." 

Happy old saint ! Such faith as hers has ever been 
honored and ever will be. 

Reader ! you, too, doubtless have a Bible. Does it 
possess any such memorials of your spiritual experience 
with the Divine promise? Have you tried and proved for 
yourself the faithfulness of God to the soul that trusts 
and obeys Him ? 

The Bible contains the same truths and promises for 
you that it did for this aged widow. Its word addresses 
you for the same purpose as it addressed her. It de- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 63 

clares that Jesus Christ, the Divine Son of God, is the 
Saviour of sinners. That ' ' God so loved the world, that 
He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
on Him should not perish but have everlasting life." 

The Bible declares that God hears and answers 
prayer. That He is a present help in trouble. That 
He is the Father of mercies and the God of comfort. Do 
you know this in your own soul's history and experience ? 
Have you not proved these things ? Then it is because 
you have not tried them. Seek in the Divine Word, for 
the truth maketh wise unto salvation. Imbibe its teach- 
ings ; attend to its instruction ; believe its statements ; 
obey its precepts. Seek by prayer for the help of the 
Holy Spirit, and by His power you shall be able to re- 
duce to practice the commands of the Most High. And 
as you seek thus for mercy, pardon and renewal through 
faith in Jesus Christ, and repentance toward God ; you 
will find God faithful to you, peace, and joy, and hope 
will fill your soul with gladness, and you, too, will be 
able to write on the margin of the book that records the 
promises, tried and proved ; and you will be able to sing 
with gratitude and joy: 

" Should all the powers that men devise 
Assail ray faith with treacherous art, 

I'll call them vanity and lies, 

And bind the gospel to my heart." 

— From Gleanings for the Young. 



64 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 



THE BIBLE A BOOK FOR THE PEOPLE. 

There is surely every reason why all men should have 
the word of God in their own tongue, so as not to be 
wholly dependent on oral instruction. For the Bible 
contains not only the seminal truths of theology and 
those higher doctrines which find fitting expression in 
service and worship, but it takes up the relations, duties, 
and trials of social and public life. It has a loving edict 
for the parent, and another for the child. It offers a 
word to the master, with a reciprocal word to the 
servant ; and it contains a directory for the hearth and 
household. It breathes promises of special tenderness 
to the widow and orphan, and presents indescribable 
comfort and hope to the bereaved. It dwells on 
patience and humility, condescension and self-denial, 
disinterested love* and unwearied beneficence, as charac- 
teristic graces. Buyer and seller are included in its 
equitable precepts ; tilling, sowing, and reaping, find a 
place among its illusions ; and even the animals yoked 
to labor are not forgotten in its pervading kindness. It 
sanctions the word of the magistrate, and enjoys the 
" quiet and peaceable " life of the citizen. The wages 
of the soldier, the hire of the workman, the thirst and 
weariness of the traveler, the care of the poor and the 
stranger are not beneath its notice. The maiden is wed- 
ded with its blessing, and the grave is closed under its 
comforting assurances. In hallowing the " life that now 
is," it shows the pathway to " that which is to come." 
In the entire range of literature, no book is so frequently 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 65 

quoted or referred to. The test of no ancient author 
has summoned into operation such an amount of labor ; 
and it has furnished occasion for the most masterly ex- 
amples of criticism and comment. The fathers of the 
first centuries expounded it, and the divines of the mid 
die ages refined upon its statements. It whetted the 
penetration of Abelard, and exercised the keenness and 
subtlety of Aquinas. It gave life to the revival of letters, 
and Dante and Petrarch revelled in its imagery. Our 
New Testament has inspired the English muse with her 
loftiest strains. It does effective service in many of the 
dialogues of Shakespeare ; its beams gladdened Milton 
in his darkness, and cheered the soul of Cowper in his 
sadness. Among the christian classics it opened up 
spheres of thought and research to Ussher, Jewel, and 
Lardner ; it charged the fullness of Hooker, barbed the 
point of Baxter, gave colors to the palette and sweep to 
the pencil of Bunyan, and enriched the fragrant fancy of 
Taylor. 

The Bible is thus a people's book, overshadowing 
with its authority individuals, households, churches, and 
kingdoms ; including in its jurisdiction persons of every 
rank, age, and calling, from birth to death ; telling all 
men what to believe, what to obey and what to suffer ; 
developing a nation's wealth in its truest form, and fos- 
tering liberty and fraternity in their only genuine merit 
and meaning. The people of this country were natur 
ally very glad to have such a volume in their common 
speech ; and when they got any fragment of it they 
cherished it with reverential fondness, and in days when 
it was forbidden to have it or read it, they secreted it 



66 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

with jealous care, and in a quiet hour took it from its 
concealment, and stealthily pondered over it. No won- 
der that so many men and women suffered all penalties 
rather than give it up or confess that it was criminal to 
have the Psalter or Gospels in their "own tongue 
wherein they were born." The man, therefore, who 
gave such a gift in its integrity to his people deserves 
to be "held in everlasting remembrance." — Eadie's 
''English Bible r 



THE BIBLE IN OLDEN DAYS. 

When Tyndale translated and printed the New Testa- 
ment, at Worms, the precious volume was brought 
over thence to London, Norwich, and Oxford, concealed 
in bales of merchandise. It was eagerly bought, and 
soon many copies were spread over the length and 
breadth of the land. Many who received a portion of 
the precious book, cherishing it in their hearts, fell 
down on their knees and thanked God with tears of joy 
for it. The Romish Bishop of London, filled with 
alarm and anger, thrust people into dungeons in whose 
possession copies were found, and publicly burned all 
the Testaments he could seize. Then foolishly thinking 
to end the matter, he secretly employed a merchant to 
go to Worms and buy up the whole edition. That 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 67 

done, he had it consumed in a large fire kindled on pur- 
pose at St. Paul's Cross. Tyndale himself was afterward 
cruelly hunted down by his enemies, and died as a 
martyr, but the good seed he had been instrumental in 
sowing had already taken deep root ; and, in thus giving 
his countrymen the New Testament in their own lan- 
guage, ''he gave them the charter of salvation, the 
book of eternal life ; while his own history affords a 
beautiful example of its purifying and saving power, 
under the blessings of the Holy Spirit." 

On the coronation day of Edward the Sixth, when he 
beheld the three swords used on such occasions, he 
asked where the fourth was. His lords and courtiers 
looked up with surprise, and asked what he meant. 
The youthful and pious king replied in these ever mem- 
orable words : ' ' The Bible : that book is the sword of 
the Spirit, and is to be preferred before these swords ; 
without that we are nothing, we can do nothing, we 
have no power." 

On the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the throne, 
after the death of Queen Mary, when, according to the 
custom of the times, .prisoners were released at the 
coronation rejoicings, and those who had long been 
bound came forth again to light and freedom, one of 
Elizabeth's lords quaintly said : " There are yet four or 
five others to be freed." "Ah, who are they?" she 
asked. " Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul," was 
the answer; "they have been long shut up, so that 
they could not talk to the common poeple, who are 
eager to see them abroad again." Elizabeth was a 
Protestant, so the cruel laws of her sister were repealed, 



6S Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

the Evangelists were let to go free, and the people re- 
ceived them gladly. 

Let not such precious and dear-bought blessings and 
privileges ever be set aside, either at the bidding of 
Roman Catholics or secularists. The Bible is still the 
same book ; and its enemies bear, in our own day, the 
very same hatred to it that they did then. It is the old 
and inevitable conflict between light and darkness, and 
the war will last till all shadows flee away before the 
perfect day. 

With a great price our forefathers obtained this free- 
dom ; we are free-born ; therefore, let us sacredly pre- 
serve our birthright, and, as in duty bound, transmit it, 
pure and intact, to our children. — By Andtew James 
Symington, in the Adva7ice. 



SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. 

The following extracts are from the able and eloquent 
address of the Rev. C. H. Fowler, D. D., President of 
the Northwestern University, at the anniversary of the 
American Bible Society, in Chicago : — 

We cannot pass from this theme without indicating 
some of the incidental allusions to scientific knowledge 
found in this most ancient book. It has a moral pur- 
pose, and it can touch science only incidentally. A 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 69 

revelation of science would be either useless or mean- 
ingless. I will only refer to some of the many points 
showing advanced scientific knowledge in the mind of 
the author of the book. 

1. The indeterminate date of the first statement, " in 
the beginning," was not first exhibited by geology. St. 
Augustine, from the record itself, taught, more than 
1,200 years in advance of science, that the creative days 
were vast periods. 

2. The Bible declares a beginning. Geology and 
astronomy, after more than thirty centuries, are now 
beginning to point to a beginning. 

3. Long, long ago, Inspiration adumbrated the vast 
system of Law that obtains in nature. It spoke of "a 
decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning." " He 
hath established the heavens forever. He hath made a 
decree which shall not pass." After so many ages of 
wondering, human knowledge has just found out about 
these laws, and new zeal is extending the idea. 

4. The Bible teaches the great law of progress. The 
record of the six days of Genesis shows a vast upward 
march from chaos'to order, from mist to sea, from sea to 
land, from land to life — from fish to man. And its moral 
revealments are in the same progression. All this has 
just now gotten into the brain of science. 

■5. To take another point from Dawson, and handled 
by McCosh. The Bible acknowledges types, or plans in 
Nature. The Psalmist says : "Thine eyes did see my 
substance yet being imperfect ; and in Thy book all 
my members were written. Day by day were they 
fashioned when there were none of them." Here is 



70 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

embryology and typology, two fundamental laws of 
science. 

6. The Bible has given an outline of creation, a sort 
of table of contents, which is written up in the book of 
Nature. Let us enumerate some of the chapters, (a.) 
The earth was "without form and void," and darkness 
was on the face of the abyss. Science describes the 
same condition, saying that " the earth was a whirl of 
vapor, rolling through space, a vast gaseous and misty 
mass, incapable of being the abode of life." (a.) The 
Bible creation begins with sending forth light forces. 
Science is doing the same, (c.) The Bible light is care- 
fully distinguished from luminaries. Light is found in 
the first day, luminaries not until the fourth, (d.) The 
Bible and geology agree in giving us a shoreless ocean. 
(e.) This is followed in both Revelation and Science 
with the elevation of dry land. (/.) The Bible causes 
the sea to swarm with animal life of a low order. 
Geology here takes up the story, and illustrates it in 
detail, (g.) Revelation next gives us the lower order 
of land animals. Geology agrees, (h.) The Bible gives 
us man among the higher animals. Geology among the 
mammals, (#.) The Bible tells us that man was created 
as the highest and last type of animal life. Geology 
has not discovered any new species introduced since 
man. 

7. The Bible, in the twenty-eighth chapter of Job, 
gives us an insight into the structure of the earth, and 
a knowledge of mineralogy that would do honor to the 
knowledge even of this age. 

8. In the thirty-eighth chapter of the same book, 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. ■ 71 

occurs that wonderful passage, " Canst thou bind the 
sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of 
Orion?" " Canst thou bring forth Maggaroth in his 
season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? " 
These statements were beautiful poetic conceptions for 
ages, till modern astronomy has revealed a deeper mean- 
ing. It has long been understood that the known uni- 
verse, with all its systems, is moving through space. The 
observations of centuries has left it uncertain whether it 
moves in a right line or a curve. New astronomers are 
agreeing that it is moving around a point in the Pleiades. 
Surely this mighty attraction gives to the "sweet influ- 
ences " a depth and richness which science has found 
after a search of 3, 500 years. Now we are ready to 
comprehend what was open to the thought of the 
ancient seer when he turned from all the theories and 
science of his time, and said of God, that " He stretch- 
eth out the North over empty space, and hangeth the 
earth upon nothing." 

Surely Revelation makes a good record among the 
sciences, even in incidental references. And I present 
the cosmogony of the Bible not as an embarrassment to 
Divine inspiration, but as an argument from a scientific 
standpoint, challenging the admiration of every thought- 
ful man. Whence did these old shepherds and chiefs 
receive their deep insight ? These books are older than 
the Iliad, older than ancient Troy, the oldest books in 
the world. How happens it that they are so abreast 
with these latter days ? Misinterpreted they have been, 
but their interpreters have often been confounded. But 
the books themselves abide. Arraigned at the bar of 



72 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

the public judgment, and cross-questioned by the most 
searching intellects for more than 3,000 years, yet here 
they are -unembarrassed by a single falsehood, and un- 
impeached by a single doctrine. They have stood the 
fires of persecution ; now and then there are charred 
spots on the cover, where the stakes have stood, but 
their treasure remains. Every page has been a battle- 
ground. For almost every chapter some heroc soul has 
dared to die. Yet out of all these fiery trials this grand 
old Bible comes in the perfection of beauty, with wisdom 
for the thoughtful, mercy for the penitent, pardon for 
the praying, hope for the despairing, comfort for the 
sorrowing, and heaven for the dying. May God hasten 
the day when it shall be found in every house, accepted 
and trusted by every human heart ! — Bible Soc. Record: 



OUR STORY RETOLD.* 

A natural result of the establishment of Sabbath 
Schools in Wales, near the end of the last century, was 
the creation of a want, and a cry more general than ever 
for the Divine lesson-book of all the schools — namely, 
the Bible. In 1799, the Society for Promoting Christian 
Knowledge printed an edition of ten thousand copies of 
the Welsh Bible, mostly for the use of those schools. 



It was first told in Welsh. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 73 

It contained also the Apocrypha, the Common Prayer, 
Archdeacon Pryse's metrical version of the Psalms, 
and Canne's marginal references, so that, with all these 
contents, its price must have been high. So great, 
however, was the thirst for religious knowledge, created 
by the popular new schools, for Bibles and Testaments, 
that the entire edition was bought up with avidity with- 
in a few months after publication, and served to create 
a still more extended demand. The next year a Welsh 
Bible was almost as difficult to obtain as ever. Earnest 
appeals were addressed to Mr. Charles, of Bala, from 
all parts, for more Bibles and Testaments, but not a 
single copy could be had. at any price. 

It may easily be imagined that the patriotic Father of 
the Welsh Sabbath Schools, in his continued journey- 
ings in all parts of the country, met with many a poor 
girl who wanted a Bible. But both speakers and writers 
have often referred to one particular Welsh girl, whose 
tale and tears stimulated him to make that memorable 
appeal to the Religious Tract Society in London, which 
led to the establishment of the Bible Society. No one 
could tell who that special girl was — her name, her 
home, or, for certain, where Mr. Charles met her. The 
fact was referred to as a link — a small and yet important 
one — in the chain of causes and effects. 

In the following narrative we shall have the pleasure, 
after long years, of introducing this little Welsh girl to 
our readers, and telling her history. Mary Jones was 
her name, and she was the daughter of Jacob and Mary 
Jones, of Llanfihangel, a small village lying in the pic- 
turesque valley on the southern side of Cadir Idris. 
6 



74 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

She was born there in 1784. Heaven had favored her 
with pious parents, who "were both righteous before 
God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances 
of the Lord blameless," but in a very humble position 
of life. She herself worked as a weaver. In those days 
children were never suffered to attend the church meet- 
ings or "societies" peculiar to Wales. But Mary's 
mother, by employing her to carry the lantern for her 
on dark evenings, managed to make, an exception of 
Mary when but very young. When Mary was about 
ten years of age, Rev. Thomas Charles, of Bala, started 
one of his circulating day schools in Abergynolwyn, a 
village about two miles distant from her home, and as 
was invariably the case with these day schools, a Sunday 
school soon followed, to teach the children the language 
and history of a better world. The inquisitive little 
daughter of Tynydol, two miles distant, was one of the 
first and most regular scholars at both schools. She 
excelled' in the day school, and in the Sunday school 
stood quite alone in her zeal to learn, and her power of 
committing to memory and repeating in public whole 
chapters of the Bible. 

Like a thousand other poor cottages in Wales in 
those days, Mary Jones' humble home had not the most 
necessary of all furniture, a complete Bible. A Welsh 
Bible, with the several human additions then printed 
with it by the Christian Knowledge Society, was high 
in price — too high for the poor weaver to reach. The 
nearest complete Bible to which $[ary had access was 
in a farm-house a mile or more from her home. She had 
permission to come and read that Bible whenever she 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 7 5 

pleased. To that Bible would she be seen frequently 
every week directing her steps to read and study her 
lesson, and treasure up a fresh chapter in her memory, 
for the school on Sunday. So great was this young 
girl's love for the Bible, that she continued to pay 
frequent visits to that distant Bible through the first six 
years of her religious career. During the whole of that 
period her own humble home was destitute of the 
Divine book. The word of God was indeed precious 
in those days. The " one thing " Mary's heart desired 
through all these lon§ years was to possess a Bible of 
her own. Every penny she received from kind neigh- 
bors for any small services she deposited in her little 
treasury, in hope of seeing, on some day, a grand total 
sufficient to buy the one book she most coveted. At 
last she could rejoice over the amount required. She 
was, however, informed that no copy of the Welsh 
Bible could be had nearer than Bala, of Mr. Charles, 
and that it was doubtful whether he had a single copy. 
She was not, however, to be discouraged, and deter- 
mined to go and inquire. 

Upon a bright morning in the Spring of 1800, the 
young girl rose with the dawn, and started off toward 
Bala in search of a Bible. She had the loan of a wallet 
to carry the Divine treasure home safely, should Heaven 
and Mr. Charles grant her anxious wishes. She had, 
too, a pair of rustic shoes to put on at her journey's 
end, when she reached the house. All the way there — 
about twenty-five or thirty miles — she walked, bare- 
footed, with the shoes in the wallet on her back. It 
was an exquisitely fine and favorable day. It was late 



J 6 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

in the evening when Mary reached Bala — too late to see 
Mr. Charles that night, as it was one of his rules, when 
at home, to be " early to bed and early to rise." As 
instructed before starting, Mary called upon a humble 
but much-respected Methodist Calvanistic preacher at 
Bala, of the name of David Edwards. He questioned 
her. Mary's intelligent replies, and the affecting object 
of her journey, soon secured the venerable father's 
deepest interest in her success. " Well, my dear little 
girl, it is too late," he said, "to see Mr. Charles to- 
night ; he always retires to bed early, but he rises in 
the morn with the earliest dawn. Thou shalt sleep here 
to-night, and we will go to Mr. Charles as soon as I see 
light in his study window to-morrow morning, so that 
thou mayst reach home before night. 

The following morning, her friend, David Edwards, 
aroused the young stranger at earliest dawn, and to- 
gether they directed their steps toward Mr. Charles' 
house. There was a light in the study window. Mr. 
Charles was up at his hard literary labors, and Mary's 
critical hour was come. David Edwards knocked at the 
door ; Mr. Charles himself opened it. Having ex- 
pressed his surprise at the earliness of his old friend's 
visit, he invited them up to the study. Her kind media- 
tor explained the object of his young friend's visit, and 
why they were compelled to intrude upon him so early. 
Mr. Charles listened thoughtfully, as became the spirit- 
ual father of the children of Wales. He questioned 
Mary on her personal history and Scripture knowledge, 
and asked her how she acquired such an unusually ex- 
tensive knowledge without a Bible in the house. Her 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. jj 

simple explanation — the constant, diligent trudging for 
the past six whole years, to a farm-house two miles dis- 
tant from her own home, to read, search, and treasure 
up in her memory the chapters of a borrowed Bible, and 
the anxious saving up of her pence and half-pence, 
through all those years, toward buying a Bible for her- 
self — this revelation intensely affected the good man. 
" It truly grieves me," he remarked to his friend, " to 
see the little girl come all the distance from Llanfi- 
hangel here to buy a Bible, and I without a Bible to 
give her. The last supply of Welsh Bibles I received 
last year from London has been all sold out months ago, 
excepting a few copies I have kept for friends whom I 
must notjdisappoint. The Society in London, which has 
for many years supplied Wales with Bibles, has now 
positively refused to print for us a single copy more. 
What I shall do for Welsh Bibles for my country again, I 
know not." Mr. Charles uttered these words with in- 
tense feeling and in the tenderest of tones, but they 
penetrated his young visitor's heart ; she burst into tears 
most bitter and pathetic. 

Despite his obligations to other friends, Mr. Charles 
could not resist the appeal. " My dear child," 
he said, " I see you must have a Bible, difficult as 
it is for me to spare you one. It is impossible to refuse 
you." 

So full was Mary's heart of gratitude to him, that her 
tongue failed in all its attempt to express it. Her soul- 
speaking eyes, however, atoned for this failure, and even 
Mr. Charles and David Edwards shed tears of smypathy 
as she placed the long-wished for treasure in her wallet 



7& Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

to carry home. Mr. Charles accompanied his gift with 
a few brief words of counsel. 

1 ' If thou, my dear girl, art glad to receive that Bible, 
truly glad am I also," he said, "to be able to give it 
you. Read it, and search it diligently, and treasure up 
its chapters in thy memory, and be a good girl. David 
Edwards," he continued in an intense emotion, " is not 
such a sight as this enough to melt the hardest heart ; a 
girl, so young, so poor, so very intelligent in the Bible, 
compelled to walk all the distance from Llanfihangel 
to Bala — about fifty miles between the journey here and 
back — to get a Bible ? From this day I can never rest 
until I find out some other means of supplying the cry- 
ing wants of my country for the word of God." 

This visit made an indelible impression upon Mr. 
Charles. Often did he bring the girl's history forward 
in his appeals to wealthy friends in England on behalf of 
Wales. He made use of it also in his appeal before the 
Committee of the Religious Tract Society, when in Lon- 
don, in December, 1802, for the formation of a society 
to meet the grievous want of Bibles and Testaments in 
Wales, with its hundreds of Sabbath schools ; and often 
afterward he told his young disciple herself, and 
teacher in his circulating school, from whom we derived 
the information, that his relation of her story created 
much sympathy in all present in favor of his appeal, and 
that it was at the highest swell of holy enthusiasm pro- 
duced by her history, that the venerable Joseph 
Hughes, of Bathersea, interjected the suggestion, "Mr. 
Charles, if a society for Wales, why not a society for 
England, and for the whole world ? " 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 79 

It will thus be seen that the scholar's visit to the Rev. 
Thomas Charles, of Bala, was closely linked with one of 
the greatest facts in the history of Christianity — the 
establishment of the British and Foreign Bible Society ! 

Mr. Charles' young visitor from Llanfihangel gave 
abundant proofs in after life that the zeal she had shown 
was no transient fit of youthful enthusiasm. She made 
good use of the Bible she bought, devoting herself with 
diligence greater than ever to read, study, and store up 
in her memory, its Divine Contents. She read some 
portion of it every day, as regularly as the day dawned, 
when at home, and her health permitted, through the 
seventy years of her after life. She read it through in 
systematic order four times, and transferred many of its 
books, richest in Divine Truths and instruction, in their 
entirety, into memory, such as those of Job, the Psalms 
and Proverbs, Isaiah, the Gospel and Epistles of John ; 
Paul's Epistles to the Romans and the Ephesians, and 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

Mary Jones throughout life displayed especial zeal for 
the Sabbath school. She was one of the first scholars 
in. the first Sabbath school established in her native vil- 
lage, and never ceased to be one of the most faithful 
scholars or teachers in this most blessed of our Welsh 
religious institutions until she ceased to be able to walk 
to it, and ceased to live, in the eigthy-second year of her 
age. This peculiar zeal for the Sabbath school was the 
natural fruit of her peculiarly inquisitive mind and taste 
for Scripture knowledge. 

She was one of the most constant and most zealous 
attendants at all assemblages of the Sabbath 



80 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

schools of the surrounding districts for publicly cate- 
chising the scholars, and promoting Biblical knowledge. 
These public catechising assemblies, established by Mr. 
Charles, in Wales, and in which he was himself, for 
many years, the leading actor, proved of inestimable 
service in creating and diffusing that Biblical taste and 
intelligence, so characteristic of the Welsh nation. 
Whenever or wherever the great Welsh apostle held 
such assemblies in these parts, never would he be dis- 
appointed of seeing his intelligent young disciple of 
Llanfihangel prominent among the crowds before him. 
During such catechisings his eye would generally turn 
to her for the most correct Scriptural replies, and often 
did he witness the extent of the knowlede she had learnt 
from the Bible she had bought of him, thrilling the en- 
tire assemblage with the holiest influences. To crown 
all the other good uses our young scholar made of her 
Bible, she taught its truths to hundreds of the rising 
generation. Mary loved her Bible, and showed by 
her example how deeply its truths had sunk into her 
heart. 

"Where there's a will there's a way," and Mary 
Jones, like every loyal subject of Christ's Kingdom, had 
her way of showing the deep interest she felt in the 
great society whose first foundation was so closely con- 
nected with her own personal history, and also in the 
Missionary society of the Calvanistic Methodist Con- 
nection, to which she belonged. During the latter half 
of her life she was famous throughout her district for 
the multitude of her bees and the quantity and quality 
of her honey and bees'-wax. Her annual receipts from 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 8 1 

the honey she reserved for her own and her fami- 
ly's maintenance ; the receipts from the bees'-wax, 
which in fortunate seasons, amounted to a considerable 
sum for one in such humble circumstances, she shared 
equally between the Bible and Missionary Societies. 
Never was any bee-keeper on more friendly terms with 
the little creatures who so busily collected for her her 
superior honey. Whenever she paid a visit to their 
tents in the garden, they gave her the most queenly re- 
ception. They seemed, as is often the case with bees, 
to know her, and, incredible as it may appear, she would 
hold a handful of the quickest comers on the palm of 
her hand as unhesitatingly as if they were common flies, 
and yet she was never stung. She used cheerily to say 
that it was owing to their missionary zeal — that they all 
knew she gave a share of the fruits of their industry to 
the service of their Creator, and on that account con- 
sidered her service a privilege and delight ! When the 
collection was made in 1854, toward the million Testa- 
ments, a half-sovereign — the only one — was found in the 
collecting boxes. It was feared it had been given in 
mistake for the silver coin of the same size. But 
it turned out t.o have been given by Mary Jones. 

Mary Jones made the Bible her lifelong friend, and 
found in it continual solace through all the varying trials 
and changes of her earthly course. Having continued 
for seventy years ' ' beholding the glory of the Lord, as 
in a glass, " more and more was she being "changed 
into the same image, from glory to glory , even as by the 
Spirit of the Lord. '.' 

When nearing the end of her pilgrimage through this 



%2 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

desert world, " walking through the valley of the shadow 
of death, she feared no evil." The words of her Bible, 
which she had so diligently treasured up in her mind 
when young, shot their cheering rays brightly and 
abundantly into her soul, and "turned the shadow of 
death into the morning." She died on the 28th of De- 
cember, 1866, in the eighty-second year of her age. — 
By R. 0. Rees y in Gleanings for the Voting. 



REGARD PAID TO SCRIPTURE BY THE 

CHURCH. 

This regard continued, in theory at least, 'till modern 
times Never has it yet been denied in the Christian 
Church, that the decision in all questions of faith belongs 
to Holy Scripture. In practice, however, it has been 
otherwise, in proportion as tradition has been increas- 
ingly respected and diffused. Under this name were 
soon included, not merely, as at first, such acts and 
words as were supposed to have descended from Christ 
and his Apostles, though orally transmitted instead of 
recorded in writing — but also the whole circle of dog- 
mas and practices which had been instituted by Church 
Councils, and recognized by the Church. As the Church 
itself — this visible presence of Christ, as it was esteemed 
— became the Supreme authority to Christians, its 
word and commands were regarded as ultimately de- 
cisive in all questions. Hence it came to pass, that 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 83 

while in theory, the decision was declared to rest with 
the Scriptures, in practice, it was in the hands of the 
ecclesiastical authorities, until it was shown, at the time 
of the Reformation, that'the corrupt stream of supposed 
tradition had no innate power of purifying itself from 
those disturbing elements which either injured or cor- 
rupted the saving power of The Word. 

It was this experience which, at the era of the Refor- 
mation, led to the conviction that the remedy for all the 
corruptions of ecclesiastical tradition lay only in the 
judicial power of Holy Scripture. With a clearness and 
decision, never before known, Holy Scripture was declared 
by the Reformation, and is declared by* the Protestant 
Church, to be the sole umpire in matters of Christian faith 
and practice. Thus Scripture has obtained among us 
an importance radically differing from that which it pos- 
sesses in the Church of Rome. Hence, our own church, 
too, lays special stress upon the study of Holy Scripture, 
and regards it as the foundation of all theory. Never 
and nowhere has so much self-sacrificing diligence been 
devoted to the investigation of Scriptures as since the 
Reformation, and in the Protestant Church, for this im- 
portance of Scripture forms part of the very nature of 
our Church. If the Romanists say : " The ultimate de- 
cision rests with the Church, for she is the infallible 
vehicle of the Holy Spirit ; we Protestants say : The 
ultimate decision rests with Holy Scripture, for it is the 
authentic testimony of Jesus Christ. The whole essence 
of Protestantism, and the whole creed of the Protestant 
Church, may be summed up in these twofold sayings : 
None but Christ ! and nothing but Scripture ! It is 



84 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

asked : Where is salvation to be found, and wherein 
does it consist ? Our answer is : In none but Christ ; 
He alone is the propitiation for our sins ;~and faith in Him 
alone makes us righteous before God. And it is asked ; 
Where have we certain testimony to Jesus Christ, and 
an ultimate decision in questions of salvation and of the 
way of salvation ? Our answer is : In Scripture alone, 
for it is the rule of faith and practice for the Church of 
Jesus Christ and for all Christians. These are the two 
Chief Truths and principles of Protestantism. 

But the question of Christ, and the question of Holy 
Scripture, are the two leading questions of the day, the 
two most contested articles of the Christian doctrine. 
Is Christ the Son of God ? Are the Scriptures the 
Word of God? Is not Christ a mere man, though an 
extraordinary man ? Is not Scripture a merely human, 
though an Important human work ? Amidst the var- 
ious arguments and counter-arguments, it has come to 
this, that many know not what else to say of Christ 
than : " We know not who he was; " nor of Scripture 
than; "We know not what to think of it." Others, 
again, have done with Christ and with Scripture alto- 
gether, and rejected both the one and the other. They 
who do not believe in Christ do not believe in Scripture 
which testify of him. The two stand or fall together. 
It is important, however, that these questions should be 
decided. For, as the history of mankind is determined 
by Christ, so is our whole religious and intellectual life 
determined by Scripture. 

Having, then, made this brief historical survey, let 
us proceed to consider the importance of Holy Scripture 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 85 

to the Church and to the individual Christian. Scrip- 
ture is of supreme importance to our zvhole intellectual 
and spiritual life. 

The whole range of Christian culture and mental 
wealth springs from two roots which are found in the 
past ; one in the lands of Rome and Greece, the other 
in the land of God's people. From the one we derive 
our intellectual culture, from the other our religion. 
And it is our religion which, together with the secular 
cultivation of Greece and Rome, and the national 
spirit of our people, forms that one great whole which 
we call Christian civilization. The instrument, how- 
ever, of all intellectual cultivation is literature. As the 
spirit of those great nations of civilization speaks to us 
through the writings of their authors, by means of 
which, too, such works of art as have been transmitted 
to us become intelligible, and speak in a language 
which we can comprehend, so has the religion of Israel 
and of Christendom its literature. In it does the religion 
of that home of religion speak to us. Side by side with 
the literature of secular culture, we possess this sacred 
literature of religion. Nor need this sacred literature 
shrink from ranking itself by the side of the secular 
religion of civilization. Even apart from its religious 
importance, and regarded only from a human point of 
view, the Bible is the most magnificent literary work 
existing in the whole world — as great through the 
touching simplicity and historical importance of its nar- 
ratives, as it is through the fullness and depths of its 
thoughts, the power and variety of its discourses, and 
the abundance .and beauty of its poetry. Long ere 



86 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

Pindar celebrated in his odes the Olympic victors, had 
David composed those psalms whose soaring thoughts 
and powerful words still refresh our souls. And long 
before Homer charmed the enraptured ears of the 
youthful nations on the coasts of Asia Minor by 
the deeds of the heroes of Troy, had Moses and his 
sister sung their songs of victory on the overthrow of 
the Egyptian monarch, and Deborah celebrated in her 
bold metaphors the victory of Israel. When the foun- 
dations of Rome, the world's future metropolis, were 
being laid upon the hills by the Tiber, the prophets of 
Israel were surveying, with a glance enlightened by the 
Spirit, the fate of the nations, and predicting their future 
destiny ; while, with a power of eloquence surpassing 
that of Demosthenes, and with flights of poetry more 
lofty than those of ^Eschylus, they announced the judg- 
ments of God upon the sins of their nation, and in tones 
sweeter than the sweet numbers of a Sophocles, spoke 
of his grace. There is no single note in the whole scale 
of human emotion, from the thunders of holy indigna- 
tion or the heart-rending cry of despair, to the softest 
accents of mercy or the ardent rays of love, which does 
not find expression in Scripture. We keep in memory 
the names and sayings of the seven wise men of Greece ; 
but what is their wisdom to the treasures of practical 
wisdom laid up in the proverbs of the Old Testament ? 
We dive into the depths of Plato's views, and admire 
the nobleness of his ideas ; but the Scriptures speak of 
the world of the eternal ideal, as of the well known 
home of their spirit, and express the deepest 
thoughts and most comprehensive views with as much 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 87 

certainty and simplicity as though they were treating of 
the simplest truths in the world, or of those self-evident 
principles which all acknowledge. Truly, when viewed 
only from a human point of view, as a mere work of 
the human mind, Scripture far surpasses all the literary 
productions of all nations and ages. Let us but 
imagine that we had never possessed the Bible, and 
that it had but just now been for the first time dis- 
covered in the corner, perhaps, of some library — and 
what an impression would such a discovery make ! It 
would create the greatest sensation which a literary dis- 
covery could create ; a far greater one than if Homer's 
lays, Shakespeare's plays, or Goethe's poems should, 
for the first time, suddenly appear. The wonderful 
book would form the topic of conversation in all society, 
professorships would be founded for its interpretation, 
and to know and read it would form a part of every 
education. For it contains within itself a world of 
thoughts ; it is a universe of mind. Reville, an advo- 
cate of modern French rationalism, concludes an essay 
in the Revue des deux Mondes (1864) with the following 
words: "One day the question was started in an 
assembly, What book a man condemned to a life-long 
imprisonment, to whom but one would be allowed, 
had better choose to take into his cell with him ? The 
company consisted of Catholics, Protestants, philoso- 
phers, and even materialists ; but all agreed that his 
choice could fall only on the Bible " — a distinguished 
tribute to the Bible — a tribute not merely to its intel- 
lectual excellence, but also to its religious importance. 
— Chr. Ernst Luthardt. 



88 Gleanings for Bible Readers, 



A FARTHING CANDLE. 

One very dark night — no moon to be seen and no 
stars — I was in a steamboat with some hundred passen- 
gers. All of them were on deck, for the sea was 
smooth, and the gentle air was warm ; and the passen- 
gers chatted in Italian or in Greek, while the captain 
told us we were nearing Cape Matapan, the most south- 
erly point of Europe. 

The noise of the steamer's paddle-wheels was like 
' ' pitta-patta, pitta-patta ; " but suddenly the paddles 
stopped. 

The captain had ordered them to stop because the 
night was so very dark, and he did not know the way, 
and perhaps we might be near some of the very dan- 
gerous rocks in that part of the sea. So he was right 
'to stop, and listen, and look, and all the passengers 
looked and listened in silence. At last some one called 
out, "Oh, I see a light!" and all of us looked that 
way. 

The light was very tiny, just like a little star ; but it 
moved, first down, and down, and down, and then it 
was steady a bit ; then it waved quietly right and left, 
then it went out altogether, and everything was dark 
again. 

All of us looked, and all were silent ; but the captain 
said, " All right ; go on ahead ! " and the paddles again 
went ' ' pitta-patta, " and the vessel moved on in safety. 

What was the light ? Why did it move, and why was 
it put out ? I will tell you now : 



Geanings for Bibe Readers. 89 

On these black rocks at Cape Matapan there was a 
little old man, a hermit monk, who lived in a hut of 
stones. He was too old and too feeble to do much 
work ; but what he did was this : whenever he heard a 
ship was near, by the sailors' voices or by the paddle- 
wheels' sound, he lighted a little farthing candle and 
stepped down slowly to the edge of the sea, and then 
he waved *his light to the right and to the left, and then 
he blew it out and went back to bed in his stone hut. 
That was all he did ; but it was enough to tell where the 
rocks were, and where the safe water was ; and so the 
sailors knew where to go, and they thanked the old 
man, and sometimes (in the daylight) they took food to 
him and clothes. 

Now, you remember that Jesus said, " I am the 
light of the world ; " and he came and lighted the way, 
and he went back to heaven, and he will come again 
to the world in brighter glory. 

Meantime He left with us His word — the blessed 
Bible — to be " a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our 
path," like a candle in the dark, to show us the danger, 
and to show us the right way for going on our journey 
through a dark world to the bright heaven He has gone 
to prepare. 

Every boy and every girl who reads this story can 
hold up the Bible as a light every day, in the house, in 
the workplace, and in the streets, and in the school, and 
even in playtime, too. 

Dear little friends, the Bible Society gets these Bible 
lights ready for you in English words, and for the 
French people, and Italians, and Russians, and Turks, 
7 



90 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

all in their own words ; but the same blessed light is for 
all. 

Will you get the light for your own heart ? 

Will you help the Society to send the light over the 
world ? 

Will you hold it up among your neighbors ? Say 
" Yes !" to those three questions, and may God bless 
you. — Rod Roy, in Gleanings for the Young. * 



00 SHAW MAH. 

The Baptist Missionary Magazine contains the story 
of the conversion of 00 Shaw Mah, a Buddhist priest 
in Burmah, forty-five years of age, as told by himself. 
He describes himself as a proud, self- righteous. man, 
believing in the transmigration of souls, and expecting 
to overbalance his sins by meritorious deeds. After 
speaking of the grand funeral which he made for his 
mother, at a cost of two thousand rupees, he says : 

About that time a priest whom you know gave me 
three paper books — an Arithmetic, Land Measure, and 
a Digest of God's Book. I had heard about this relig- 
ion, but I did not understand it, for the words had gone 
into one ear and out at the other. As I did not have 
much to occupy my time, I read the Digest out of curi- 
osity, and very soon I began to dislike the doctrine of 
annihilation. I wanted to believe that I would be some 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 9 1 

great person in my next state. I knew that I had some 
sins, and I expected to serve the punishment of these ; 
but I still believed that I had great merit, and I should 
have reward in some of my states. I came to your 
house after I had seen you at Swah Doh, and you gave 
me a tract telling about creation. I did not go for a 
book, but accepted it, as I wished to be polite to you. 
Ater I went to my monastery I read it out of mere 
curiosity, and to pass away the hours. Sometimes I 
was a little troubled about our way, but as our law for- 
bids a doubt, I did not dare to think very much about 
the new way. One day, while I was absent from my 
monastery, a play-actor came into my place and left one 
of your books, which had been given to him, as he did 
not care for it. I read that tract, and it seemed very 
clear ; but I remembered that I must not have any 
doubts, and I continued to preach and believe in the 
Buddhist doctrines. Though I did not believe in the 
new law, I had a respect for it, and my heart began to 
say that it was the right way ; and I was greatly im- 
pressed with the earnest talk of some of the Christians. 
They knew our way, and had left it for another one, 
and they said it was the right one. 

I met preachers, and came to your house, and talked, 
and read ; but I did not really believe one of your doc- 
trines. I believed all animals had been human beings 
in a former state ; and I often told the people that they 
would be dogs, or cattle, or tigers, like those about us. 

But the great time came — the great time of my life. 
Last year I called the people, and we began to regild our 
big marble idol. When it was nearly done, I heard a cry 



92 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

of Alas ! And when I turned, behold ! the hand of the 
idol had fallen. It was like a dagger to my heart ; and 
I left the men, and went into the monastery, and did 
not speak to any one. I was then really convinced that 
my idol had no power. And I said, " God, the eternal 
God, has shown His power and done this." I re-read 
your books, and from that time I have no faith in idols. 
I felt that your way was the true one, and I must enter 
into it. I came again to your house, and talked with 
you and Miss Evans; and, before I knew it, I liked the 
name of Jesus. I saw that I had been a great sinner, 
and I prayed for mercy ; and ere long I found peace in 
trusting in the blood of Christ. 

All the way of Buddhism seems very dark to me now ; 
but before the hand of the idol broke I was sincere, and 
thought that way was the one which would take me to 
some good future. My mind is now at rest, and I have 
no doubts. I long to have a good understanding of the 
Scriptures, and I wish to tell the people of this land 
about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the real Saviour of 
sinners. 

I can meditate on all the doctrines of the New Tes- 
tament, and never get confused ; and when I pray I feel 
sure that God hears me. When I know more about the 
Scriptures, I wish to go and discuss with my friends of 
the priesthood. They will hear me, and God may 
make them believe our doctrines. 

Mrs. Ingalls, in communicating the above interesting 
narrative, adds: "This is the story of this priest who 
was baptized three months ago. I have had some 
pleasure in marking a few points of his history ; and it 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 93 

has given me new courage to sow beside all waters, and 
to expect that God will use various means to bring these 
laborers into his vineyard. A priest is presented with 
three books. The seed did not find good ground there, 
but it went to 00 Shaw Mah. J^ play-actor took a 
book. The seed did not find good soil, but it went to 
00 Shaw Mah. He was impressed with the earnest- 
ness of the Christians. The meaning of the name Jesus 
was given to him and his followers ; but his followers 
heeded it not. To him it was a surety of salvation, and 
he was saved. Oh, pray for the seed we sow ! The 
one who first receives the new tract may not be blessed ; 
but the book, and the Word, and the example, will find 
some good soil, and God's promise will be verified. The 
convert has been taken up by a Christian friend ; and 
each morning he sits in our market-stall, the once proud 
priest, now a disciple of Jesus, and a preacher of Bible 
doctrines. Once he was too proud and scornful to take 
a book from a woman ; now he is her most earnest and 
most humble pupil. Let the name of our God be 
praised. The stone which the builders refused is be- 
come the head-stone of the corner." 



THE UNITY AND THE VARIETY OF THE 

BIBLE. 

The test of the Scripture holds the mind to itself, and 
out of itself propels its own energy and beauty into 
every treatise that would expound it, into every system 



94 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

that is vitally derived from it. It keeps theology itself 
from becoming as dry as the "ribbed sea-sand," and 
makes it, as far as it adheres to the letter of God's 
Word, and is in harmony with its spirit, fresh and green, 
full of force and full of grace. It is the one Scripture 
which never grows old, with fountains sparkling amid 
its granite, and harebells wreathed around its cliffs. 

And yet, by reason of this constitution, see also how 
capable it is of being translated into each language ; not 
only incapable of being destroyed by mutilation or addi- 
tion, or of being supplanted by any paraphrase, but 
capable of being physically transferred into each foreign 
tongue, as is no other book on earth. Reading the best 
translation of a foreign work is usually like looking at 
the painted windows of the Chapel or Cathedral from 
the outside. You see merely the general outline, per- 
haps only vague and clashing blotches of color ; you do 
not see the fine inestimable touches and traits, the har- 
monious beauty of delicate lines, the glory of the golden 
crown, the rich crimson and blue of the robes. You see 
them only darkly tinted, perhaps distorted. But the 
Bible is capable of indefinite translation into all human 
tongues, because each tongue has in it of necessity the 
terms of narrative, of poetry, of law, of biography, and 
of parable ; and these make up so much of the Scrip- 
ture ! Then, if you find that there is a final poverty in 
the language — which never has had the Scripture ideas 
as yet expressed in it — a poverty of terms to express 
the great facts of justification, regeneration, of redemp- 
tion by Christ, and of the disciples' inner experience, 
language itself, when it has taken the Bible into it, be- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 95 

comes expanded, ennobled, spiritualized. It enlarges 
itself to the compass of the new treasure, it exalts itself 
to the height of the recent acquisition. The language is 
regenerated as well as the spirit of the people who use 
it. It becomes Heavenlier, as does their society. So • 
it was that Eliot could take this immense and magnifi- 
cent book, made by so many writers in so many ages, 
under the superintendence of one Supreme Mind, and 
put it into the sterile and narrow Algonquin tongue, 
that never before had held a conception of any one of 
all the facts, of any one of all the elements of spiritual 
experience, which the Scripture brings to light. So it 
is that it can go to-day into the language of the China- 
man, of the Japanese, the New Zealander, the Esqui- 
maux, the Tamil people or the Tartars, or the Bushmen 
of South Africa. It can go, as it has gone, into more 
than two hundred languages of the earth. It can go 
into all, by reason of the fact that it is so carefully 
and variously made up, of story, song, law, and proverb. 
You can not translate other books in like manner, as I 
have said. The fact that this book can be thus trans- 
lated, as it indeed has been, and can be made the prop- 
erty of the world — the fact that we have this wonderful 
modern gift of tongues, through these translations of 
the Scripture into so many languages and dialects of 
mankind — is owing to its marvellous literary constitu- 
tion. No language will fail to give some part of it 
clearly and fully ; and each part by itself, when fully re- 
ceived, will be found to be instinct with the life of the 
whole. 

But observe, yet further, that from that whole, so 



g6 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

various, so vast, so complete as it is, we gather a final, 
total impression of the truth which it brings, which is 
far more sufficient and far more impressive than 
we otherwise could have had ; because we see that 
truth at so many angles, from so many points, 
and through the medium of so many styles. The 
Bible is like a diamon'd that has not one, but fifty 
faces, from each of which the radiance flashes. It is 
like a great palace, not like a wall. Many books are 
like walls, thin, perpendicular, alike on both sides, 
which are only attractive when thoroughly masked 
under trellis and vine. Here is a palace, with many 
fronts, with hospitable door-ways, storied roofs, far- 
reaching outlooks ; its whole exterior broken into dif- 
ferent angles and gables, hanging balconies, oriole win- 
dows ; its vast interior rich in saloons, music halls, 
galleries, libraries, the theatre, the throne-room, all the 
apartments for work and for rest, for study and for 
pleasure, for public ceremonial, and for serene domestic 
joy. Such is the Bible. And from this manifoldness 
of its structure we get a final impression of its truth, 
which is richer and more powerful than could possibly 
have been made if, in its constitution, it had been nar- 
rower and more limited. 

One of our American artists, wishing to perfect for 
himself a portrait and a bust of Shakespeare, took the 
death mask from the face of the poet, and had twenty 
or thirty photographs made, from every possible angle 
of vision, that he might get the fullest light on every 
point of face and head ; then came the portrait on the 
canvass, and then the stately head in marble. So we 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. gj 

look at the face and figure of Christ, as these are given 
us in the Bible ; from the earliest prophecy, from the 
law, from the ritual, from the psalm and song, from the 
evangelical prophesies of Isaiah, from the song of 
Matthew, and the other of Mark, and the other of 
Luke, and the wonderful spiritual story of John, from 
the argument of Paul, the exhortation of Peter, and the 
great vision at last of the King in the heavens — when 
the garden, with which the race began, has become the 
eternal city of God, and when the Babe- Prince is the 
Lord of the saints — we take all these, and from them 
all we get such a trascendent image of the Son of God 
as no one writer could have given. It takes forty 
writers, even under the inspiration of God, to portray 
for us that sympathizing Sovereign, that bleeding Con- 
querer, that crucified King, whom we are by-and-by to 
see, with*the pierced hands holding the scepter, with 
the many diadems where was of old the crown of 
thorns ! 

So it is, friends and fellow-workers, that this variety 
in the structure of the Scriptures vindicates the book in 
which it is found as coming from God ; designed in His 
wisdom, accomplished by the impulse and the influence 
of 'the Spirit. It makes the book universal in its range, 
adapted to all men. It makes it comprehensive in its 
appeal to each individual student of it. It makes 
the most educating book in the world, to him 
who would master all its contents ; makes it the 
grandest power in civilization, by which inquiry 
is challenged and thought is stirred, on every side, 
which becomes the germ of arts and sciences, of univer- 



98 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

sities and libraries, of generous literatures, social ameli- 
orations, enlightened governments. Because it is 
formed as it is, it is made impossible to destroy its 
integrity, or tp make it teach another doctrine than 
that in which all its parts concur ; impossible to para- 
phrase, yet easy to translate it, into every tongue. 
Because it is framed as it is, we get from it such an 
ultimate impression and conception of the truth, so com- 
plete and so powerful, as could not otherwise have been 
conveyed. And at all times it is one in its substance, 
in its truth, in its law, in its clear revelation of God and 
His government, of man and his needs, of Christ the 
Lord, the King of the world, and of the Divine spiritual 
kingdom, in which He is the head, and into which all 
who believe in Him are thereby gathered. It has a 
vast, multiform oneness ; not like that of Paradise Lost, 
or of Plato's Republic, or even of the Koran, which is 
one by limitation, because the utterance of a single 
mind. This is a oneness compacted out of all the var- 
ieties of experience, power, spiritual culture, in many 
separate and widely scattered writers. It is a unity 
built of variety; and it makes the Bible the supreme 
phenomenon of the literary world. It is like the earth. It 
is a book for the earth, and, as I said before, it corres- 
ponds with it ; one planet, but with rivers, meadows, 
and mountain ranges, assembled in it ; with seas and 
islands, the narrow isthmus, the out-stretch of conti- 
nents ; with monitory fires underneath and the great, 
solemn stars above : with the moon walking the sky, 
as to-night, in placid brightness, and the sun shedding 
the splendor of day across the lands, that we are glad 



Gleanings for Bible Readers, 99 

in his coming. So is the Bible. It has parable and 
psalm, brief story and vast legislation, mighty argument, 
charming incident, curt admonition. It, too, has the 
sun of Righteousness ; its Old Testament and its New, 
like answering hemispheres, what is latent in the one 
being patent in the other. Before the threat of its pen- 
alties the earth throbs. The unsearchable splendor of 
its promises gilds the skies. 

Assuredly it is the Book of God. When you can 
prove to me that man has built the mountains of brick- 
work, and has covered the earth with a mud which he 
has manufactured for soil — when you can convince me 
that he has adjusted the planet in its poise, and set the 
stars upon their, courses — then you may prove to me 
that the Bible with its oneness and its infinite variety, 
its production extending over fifteen hundred years, 
and with its last verse anwering to its first across the 
dreamy drift of ages, has come to us from man ! 

Let us study it, then, my friends, with eager rev- 
erence. Let us consider it with such thoroughness of 
examination as is suitable to a book which comes to us 
from such a source ! Let us count it our grandest privi- 
lege to study it ; our beautiful duty to teach its won- 
drous truths to others, and to spread the knowledge of 
itself and its contents around the world. What a 
mission it is to make it known ! We sound again the 
harp of David, and, put to our modern lips the golden 
trumpet of Isaiah ; we speak again with Paul in the 
jostling streets of Ephesus or of Corinth, or under the 
matchless temples of the Acropolis ; we speak with 
Moses, fresh from the thunder and lightnings of the 



100 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

mount, and with his face yet shining with a gleam from 
the glory of God ; yea, reverently we may say it, we 
speak again with the Lord Himself, at the well-side, at 
the supper, from the cross on which He died, from the 
throne on which He reigns — when we send this Bible 
around the world ! 

No other office is so grand. No other privilege, 
supreme as this, can meet us until we reach the higher 
levels of the universe which we dwell in, and enter the 
felicities which wait for those who, having loved the 
Lord on earth, as He is here revealed in His word, at 
last forever stand before Him, and do His work, and 
see His glory face to face ! — Rev. Richard S. Storrs, D. 
D. , in a volume entitled ' ' God 's Word : Man's Light and 
Guide." 



FOR THE JEW AS WELL AS FOR THE 

GENTILE. 

My dear friends, I do not think of any illustration of 
this simplest and most fundamental truth that has so 
impressed it on my mind as an incident I heard from 
the lips of Bishop Janes. He told, of a Jewish lady in 
Baltimore who gave herself to Jesus. There was a pro- 
tracted meeting in progress, in which there was noticed 
a Jewess, several evenings. And afterward her experi- 
ence came to the knowledge of the church in this way : 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 101 

Her husband, a gay man of the world, was in the 
habit of passing his evenings with congenial friends at 
the theatre or other places of amusement, leaving her 
alone at home. To relieve the monotony of the evening 
( the Methodist church, in which a protracted meeting 
was in progress, being situated in the same street), she 
slipped out, and impelled by curiosity, attended one of 
the services. The first evening's service left no particu- 
lar impression. The question simply arose in her mind, 
just as a cloud flits over the sky, "Suppose that Jesus 
was the Messiah?" The next night, Jesus was again 
preached, and before the sermon was over the question 
became more than a question ; she said to herself, 
"Jesus was, perhaps, the Messiah," and it greatly dis- 
tressed her. On the third night, the thought seized her 
soul and shook it through and through : "Jesus was the 
Messiah." Of course there came with it — inevitably to 
a Jewess — the conviction, "I am lost forever, for my 
people slew him ; " and in that spirit she went home, 
sobbing and wailing. Her husband returned at mid- 
night, and she met him in tears, and said at once, " Go 
to some Christian neighbor's and borrow for me, a New 
Testament ! " He tried to laugh her out of her impres- 
sions, or argue her out of them ; but it was of no use, 
and so for the love he bore her, he went out, at half- 
past twelve in the morning, and rang up a Christian 
neighbor. When he came to the door, the caller said : 
'• I beg your pardon, but will you be so kind as to lend 
me a New Testament ? " You may be sure the request 
was most cheerfully granted. The neighbor thought, 
" There is work in that house to be done for Jesus to- 



102 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

night ; " and as soon as he could properly dress himself, 
he hurried to a Christian brother's, and with him repaired 
to the Jewish mansion. The door was instantly opened 
and the mistress met them with a smile, saying, " I have 
found Jesus! " And then she told them the story I 
have told you, with this addition ; she said that, When 
the Testament was put into her hands, she went into her 
room alone, and kneeling, she lifted up her face to 
Heaven, and cried, "O Lord, God of my Fathers, 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, give me light, give me 
light! " She opened the Testament with closed eyes, 
and chanced to open it where my Bible is open now, at 
the beginning of the Epistle to the Romans. She read 
slowly ; the verses went tearing through her soul like 
hot thunderbolts, until she came to the sixteenth verse, 
" For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ ; for it 
is the power of God unto salvation unto every one that 
believeth ; to the Jew first" here she stopped. Her 
bursting tears blinded her. She looked again. It is "to 
the Jew first, and also to the Greek." 

As she read these words, she believed them, and was 
saved, and knew it. When the Christian brethren came 
she was a Christian. Do men tell us that this is a fancy ? 
that there is no reality represented in such an experi- 
ence as this ? When a lion becomes a lamb ! When a 
drunkard becomes sober ! When a mean, low, driveling 
youth is made a very apostle ! When Saul passes over 
into Paul ! When a Jewess becomes a Christian ! Only 
God works moral miracles like these. — President C. D. 
Foss' Sermo7t before the Massachusetts Bible Society. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 103 



THE BIBLE AND LITERATURE. 

Among other singularities of this book, if it be a mere 
production of human genius, like any other book or col- 
lection of books of the same size, may be mentioned the 
prodigious literature which it has evoked. Either it must 
have claims to attention altogether transcendent to those 
of any other — even the greatest composition of 
human genius — in order to account for men's 
ceaseless activity in translating, illustrating, explaining, 
interpreting, propagating, impugning, and defending it; 
or we must conclude that, on this one subject, no incon- 
siderable portion of mankind has virtually gone mad ; or, 
rather, that each successive portion of the race, each- 
new community or nation, that comes under the fasci- 
nation of this book, is smitten with this same incurable 
bibliomania, and proceeds to do in behalf of it, ox against 
it, what it would never dream of doing for or against 
any other books in the world, sacred or profane ! This 
mysterious book (the whole or parts of it), speaks no 
less than two hundred languages, and is daily learning 
to speak more ; that is, probably speaks as many as any 
ten of the very chiefest classics of human genius, how- 
ever widely translated, put together ; more than Homer, 
Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Walter 
Scott, put together ; far more than the Vedas and 
Koran put together. In numberless cases, again, it has 
allured men to do what, so far as we know, was never 
done on behalf of any other book, howsoever counted 
"sacred," before. It has induced them, not only to 



104 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

encounter every form of peril and the most enormous 
self-sacrifices, to get the mere chances of proclaiming the 
substance of its contents, but to undergo the most gi- 
gantic labor, in order to translate it into barbarous and 
uncouth languages. Nay, more ! in a score of cases it 
has compelled them to submit to the more ardu- 
ous, preliminary drudgery of giving a notation and visi- 
ble shape to languages which were previously but a 
" wandering voice," and nothing else. This book it is 
that first conferred on many a barbarous nation the won- 
drous art of condensing the volatile vapor of human 
thought into a visible form, taught them the first ele- 
ment of those arts which are the necessary conditions of 
all progress and civilization, and opened to them the 
road which leads on to all the triumphs of human intel- 
lect and national greatness. Many such nations — per- 
haps hereafter to be graced by a muster-roll of names as 
illustrious, and achievements as great as adorn the 
history of our own country — *may say, as she in great 
part must say also : " These things we owe to some ob- 
scure missionaries, who, like the birds that carry the 
seeds of forests to desert islands, brought us the germs 
of all these blessings in giving us the Bible. They first 
made language visible to us ; they analyzed the sounds 
which it represents, expressed them in an alphabet, re- 
duced them to grammatical forms, compiled a lexicon 
for us, opened to us the intellectual treasures of all lit- 
erature and science, and made it possible to have a 
literature and science of our own." 

Meantime its translators wrought, not for the sake of 
these vast collateral and adventitious benefits (however 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 105 

much they may have rejoiced in them), but simply for 
the book's sake itself; and would have done the work, 
all the same, if they had been sure that no literature but 
that one book would ever be known to the people for 
whom it was translated. Such is the strange enthusiasm 
it is capable of inspiring ! 

Similarly, this book has probably alone more to fix 
and preserve the languages into which it has been trans- 
lated, to retard the progress of change and corruption, 
than any other single cause whatever. This has been 
conspicuously a result of our own English version. 

And it is only just to remember that many languages, 
which already had a written character indeed, but were 
still so incrusted with barbarism as to make them wholly 
unfit for the purposes of literature, have been largely in- 
debted to the toil of those who sought to transfuse the 
contents of this book into these uncouth vehicles for it. 
This has often done more to purify and polish them, to 
mould them into forms which science and poetry could 
deign to use, than any other single cause. This was to 

a good extent the case with the early translations into 
our own language and the German. * _ .* * 

This one book, not more than the three-hundreth part 
of the extant Greek and Roman literature, has probably 
attracted it, and concentrated upon it more thought, and 
probably produced more works, explanatory, illustrative, 
apologetic — upon its text, its exegesis, its doctrines, its 
history, its geography, ethnology, chronology, and evi- 
dences — than all the Greek and Roman literature put 
together. There is scarcely a tractate in it, however 

short, that has not had more pains expended upon it 
8 



106 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

than many even of the more voluminous ancient writers. 
In walking through any great library, in inspecting any 
large catalogue (as that of the British Museum, or the 
Bodleian), one is astonished at the immense bulk of 
literature which, either directly or indirectly, owes its 
origin to this one book. It is surprising to see how 
large a portion of the huge London Catalogue is made 
up of books which, had it not been for this one, would 
never have had an existence ! 

And now, endeavoring for a moment to place myself 
in the point of view of those who regard this book as a 
simple collection of tractates, written by a number of 
obscure men, of no greater actual endowments than 
those possessed by many others (often their equals, 
sometimes their superiors), and all of them belonging 
to one of the most despised of human communities, I 
am lost in amazement at that insanity which has kept the 
most diverse nations, but always those in the very van 
of all science, learning, and civilization, thus everlast- 
ingly poring over this book ; illustrating, interpreting, 
attacking, defending it ; thinking no pains too great to 
be bestowed even on its least significant parts, and 
deeming it of more importance to prosecute this task 
than to give themselves to the like labors on the very 
masterpieces of human genius. * * * 

A library made up of all the books which have been 
written solely in defence of the Bible, would be an im- 
posing spectacle. About a century and a half ago the 
great Fabricius gave a Catalogue Raisoune of all the 
books that had been, directly or indirectly, evoked by 
Christianity down to this time. Though not exhaustive 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 07 

it forms a quarto of more than seven hundred pages. I 
apprehend that, by this time, a similar work would 
extend to at least three times the bulk. 

Equally striking, in some respects, would be the 
spectacle of all those works which have been written, 
more or less, against the book ; in general confutation of 
its claims, or against some of its principal facts and evi- 
dences. The volumes thus written for the purpose of 
correcting men's eccentric love and veneration for it (ec- 
centric on the hypothesis of its merely human origin), 
showing either that it is substantially incredible, or, like 
other books, a mixture of wisdom and folly, would form 
a library of no inconsiderable bulk. If collected from 
the earliest times (beginning with the fragments of 
Celsus and Porphyry) to the present day, they would 
occupy far more than a thousand times the space of the 
one volume against which they directed; and would 
certainly be much more numerous than all the works 
that all other " sacred" books ever had the honor of 
provoking either for or against them. — Henry Rogers. 



HOW AN INDIAN PRINCE WAS CONVERTED. 

Many years ago, in one of our mission schools, was a 
bright young Hindoo boy, named Bhajan Lai. Active 
in play, he was also diligent in study, and as a reward 



108 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

for his proficiency in learning, a Bible was given him. 
The boy did not value the gift because it was God's 
Word, for child though he w r as, his young heart was 
joined to the idols to which his parents bowed down ; 
but because the book was a prize given him on account 
of his diligence as a student he gave it a place among 
his treasures. 

Ten years before this time the Maharajah of the Pun- 
jaub, in northern India, died. The heir to the throne 
was his little son, Duleep Singh, then but four years of 
age. As he was too young to wield the sceptre of gov- 
ernment, regents governed in his place, and at the time 
when our story opens, these regents were engaged in 
war with the British. In this war they were defeated, 
and the sceptre of the Punjaub passed into the hands of 
the English. 

The British government placed the young prince* 
then fourteen years of age, on a pension, and removing 
him from the country where he l>ad expected one day 
to reign as king, sent him to Futtehgurh, to be edu- 
cated. Those to whose care he was committed desired 
to make as pleasant as possible the life of the exiled 
prince, and to amuse him, sought for him a young com- 
panion. The person to whom the choice of such a 
companion was intrusted, visited one day the school in 
which young Bhajan Lai was a pupil. The bright, 
handsome face of the boy at once attracted his atten- 
tion, and the intelligent answers he gave when ques- 
tioned in his classes, delighted and surprised him, and he 
resolved to secure this young student as a companion 
for the boy prince. Bhajan Sal was pleased with the 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 09 

distinction conferred upon him, and was at once trans- 
ferred from the school-room to the home of the young 
prince, a fine mansion in the midst of extensive grounds, 
on the banks of the sacred Ganges. 

One day young Duleep Singh found, lying among the 
possessions his companion had brought to his new 
home, the Bible he had received at school as a prize. It 
was a new book to him, and he curiously turned over 
its pages. 

11 What is this ? " he asked. 

"It is the sacred book of the Christians," was the 
answer, "and it was given me as a prize at school, so 
I keep it." 

" I wish to know what it contains," said the prince. 
Turning over its leaves, he pointed to a chapter. " Read 
that to me," he said. 

Strangely enough, it was the chapter in Acts, con- 
taining the account of the conversion of Saul. Eagerly 
the young prince listened. Again and again the story 
of the wonderfal change in heart and life in this man 
was read to him. And then he desired to know more 
of that Gospel which had power to convert the fierce 
persecutor into the faithful and self denying minister and 
missionary of that faith which he had ever sought to 
destroy. And so, day after day, the wondrous story of 
redemption was read to him, until he began to feel a 
personal interest in the great theme. Did he not find 
in his own heart just such passions as once burned in the 
heart of Saul, and did he not need just such a Saviour 
as Saul needed ? Some of the faithful missionaries at 
that time living in Futtehgurh were made acquainted 



no Gleanings for Bible Readers, 

with his case, and thought to instruct him more per- 
fectly in the things of the Kingdom. 

Duleep Singh withdrew his confidence from the Brah- 
minical priests, and placed trust alone in Christ as his 
great High Priest, and on the 8th of March, 1853, he 
received the ordinance of baptism in the presence of all 
the servants of his retinue, of the missionaries, and of 
the native Christians. He was at that time eighteen 
years of age. 

In the years that have come and gone since that 
eventful day, Duleep Singh has continued faithful to his 
vows. For many years he has resided in England, but 
he does not forget his own country and people. A large 
number of mission schools for boys are supported by 
him in India, and each year, on the anniversary of his 
marriage, he sends a princely gift to the mission, in one 
of whose schools his wife, to whom he is devotedly at- 
tached, first heard the story of the cross. — The Presby- 
terian. 



THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION THE SURE 
STANDARD OF MORALITY. 

Next to the knowledge of one God, Maker of all 
things, a clear knowledge of their duty was wanting to 
mankind. This part of knowledge, though cultivated 
with some care by some of the heathen philosophers, 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. in 

yet got little footing among the people. All men in- 
deed, under pain of displeasing the gods, were to fre- 
quent the temples ; every one went to their sacrifices and 
services ; but the priests made it not their business to 
teach them virtite. If they were diligent in their obser- 
vations and ceremonies, punctual in their feasts and sol- 
emnities, and the tricks of religion, the holy tribe as- 
sured them the gods were pleased, and they looked no 
further. 

We see how unsuccessful in this the attempts of phil- 
osophers were before our Saviour's time. How short 
their several systems came of the perfection of a true 
and complete morality is very visible. And if, since 
that, the Christian philosophers have much outdone 
them, yet we may observe that the first knowledge of 
the truths they have added are owing to Revelation ; 
though, as soon as they are heard and considered, they 
are found to be agreeable to reason, and such as can by 
no means be contradicted. Every one may observe a 
great many truths, which he receives at first from others, 
and readily consents to as consonant to reason, which he 
would have found it hard, and perhaps beyond his 
strength, to have discovered himself. Native and origi- 
nal truth is not so easily wrought out of the mine, as 
we, who have it delivered ready dug and fashioned into 
our hands, are apt to imagine. And how often at fifty, 
or three score years old, are thinking men told what 
they wonder how they could miss thinking of! which 
yet their own contemplations did not and possibly never 
would have helped them to. Experience shows that 
the knowledge of morality, by mere natural light (how 



H2 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

agreeable soever it be to it), makes but a slow progress, 
and little advance in the world. And the reason is not 
hard to find in men's necessities, passions, vices, and 
mistaken interests, which turn their thoughts another 
way. And the designing leaders, as well as the follow- 
ing herd, find it not to their purpose to employ much 
of their meditations this way. Or, whatever else was 
the cause, it is plain, in fact human reason, unassisted, 
failed men in its great and proper business of morality. 
It never, from unquestionable principles, by clear de- 
ductions, made out an entire body of the laiu of nature. 
And he that shall collect all the moral rules of the phil- 
osophers, and compare them with those contained in 
the New Testament, will find them to come short of the 
morality delivered by our Saviour and taught by His 
apostles ; a college made up for the most part of igno- 
rant, but inspired fishermen. 

Though yet, if any one should think, that, out of the 
sayings of the wise heathens before our Saviour's time, 
there might be a collection made of all those rules of 
morality which are to be found in the Christian religion ; 
yet this would not at all hinder, but that the world 
nevertheless stood as much in need of our Saviour, and 
the morality delivered by him. Let it be granted 
(though not true) that all the moral precepts of the Gos- 
pel were known by somebody or other, amongst man- 
kind, before. But where or how, or of what use, is not 
considered. Suppose they may be picked up here and 
there ; some from Solon and Bias in Greece ; others 
from Tully in Italy ; and, to complete the work, let Con- 
fucius, as far as China, be consulted ; and Anacharsis 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 113 

the Scythian contribute his share. What will all this 
do to give the world a complete morality, that may be to 
mankind the unquestionable rule of life and manners ? 
I will not here urge the impossibility of collecting from 
men so far distant from one another in time, and place, 
and languages. I will suppose that there was a Sto- 
beans in those times, who had gathered the moral say- 
ings from all the sages of the world. What would this 
amount to toward being a steady rule, a certain tran- 
script of a law that we are under ? Did the sayings of 
Aristippus or v Confucius give it an authority? Was 
Zeno a law-giver to mankind ? If not, what he or any 
other philosopher delivered, was but a saying of his. 
Mankind might hearken to it, or reject it, as they 
pleased, or as it suited their interest, passions, prin- 
ciples, or humors ; they were under no obligation ; the. 
opinion of this or that philosopher was of no authority ; 
and if it were, you must take all he said under this same 
character. All his dictates must go for law, certain and 
true, or none of them. And then, if you will take any 
of the moral sayings of Epicurus (many whereof Seneca 
quotes with esteem and approbation) for precepts of the 
law of nature, you must take all the rest of his doctrine 
for such too, or else his authority ceases ; and so no more 
is to be received from him, or any of the sages of old, 
for parts of the law of nature, as carrying with it an 
obligation to be obeyed, but what they prove to be so. 
But such a body of ethics, proved to be the law of 
nature, from principles of reason, and reaching all the # 
duties of life, I think no body will say the world had 
before our Saviour's time. It is not enough that there 



114 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

were up and down scattered sayings of wise men con- 
formable to right reason. The law of nature was the 
law of convenience to ; and it is no wonder that those 
men of parts, and studious of virtue, should by medita- 
tion light on the right, even from the observable con- 
venience and beauty of it, without making out its obli- 
gation from the true principles of the law of nature, and 
foundations of morality. But these incoherent apoph- 
thegms of philosophers and wise men, however excel- 
lent in themselves, and well intended by them, could 
never make a morality whereof the world could be con- 
vinced ; could never rise to the force of a law that man- 
kind could with certainty depend on. Whatsoever 
should thus be universally useful, as a standard to which 
men should conform their manners, must have its 
authority either from reason or revelation. It is not 
every writer of morals, or compiler of it from others, 
that can thereby be erected into a law-giver to mankind, 
and a dictator of rules, which are therefore valid be- 
cause they are to be found in his books, under the 
authority of this or that philosopher. He, that any one 
will pretend to set up in this kind, and have his rules 
pass for authentic directions, must show that either he 
builds his doctrines upon principles of reason, self-evi- 
dent in themselves, and that he deduces all the parts of 
it from thence, by clear and evident demonstration ; or 
must show his commission from Heaven, that he comes 
with authority from God to deliver His will and com- 
mands to the world. In the former way nobody that I 
know before our Saviour's time, ever did or went about 
to give us a morality. It is true, there is a law of nature', 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 115 

but who is there that ever did or undertook to give it us 
all entire, a law ; no more nor no less than what was con- 
tained in, and had the obligation of that law? Who 
ever made out all the parts of it, put them together, and 
showed the world their obligation ? Where was there 
any such code, that mankind might have recourse to, as 
their unerring rule, before our Saviour's time? If there 
was not, it is plain there was need of one to give us such 
a morality ; such a law, which might be the sure guide 
of those who had a desire to go right ; and, if they had 
a mind, need not mistake their duty ; but might be cer- 
tain when they had performed, when they failed niit. 
Such a law of morality Jesus Christ hath given, in the 
New Testament ; but by the latter of these ways, by 
revelation, we have from Him a full and sufficient rule 
for our direction, and conformable to that of reason. 
But the truth and obligation of its precepts have their 
force, and are put past doubt to us, by the evidence of 
His mission. He was sent by God ; His miracles show 
it ; and the authority of God in His precepts cannot be 
questioned. Here morality has a sure standard, that 
revelation vouches, and reason can not gainsay nor 
question ; but both together witness to come from God, 
the Great Lawgiver. And such a one as this, out of 
the New Testament, I think the world never had, nor 
can any say is anywhere else to be found. Let me ask 
any one who is powered to think that the doctrine of 
morality was full and clear in the world at our Saviour's 
birth — Whither would we have directed Brutus and 
Cassius (both men of parts and virtue, the one whereof 
believed, and the other disbelieved, a future being), to be 



1 1 6 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

satisfied in the rules and obligations of all parts of their 
duties, if they should have asked him where they might 
find the law they were to live by, and by which they 
should be charged or acquitted, as guilty or innocent ? 
If to the sayings of the wise, and the declarations of 
philosophers, he sends them into a wild wood of uncer- 
tainty, to an endless maze, from which they should 
never get out ; if to the religions of the world, yet 
worse ; and if to their reason, he refers them to that 
which had some rule and certainty, but yet had hitherto 
failed all mankind in a perfect rule ; and, we see, re- 
solved not the doubts that had arisen amongst the stu- 
dious and thinking philosophers, nor had yet been able 
to convince the civilized parts of the world that they 
had not given, nor could without a crime take away, the 
lives of their children by exposing them. 

If any one should think to excuse human nature, by 
laying blame on men's negligence, that they did not 
carry morality to a higher pitch, and make it out entire 
in every part, with that clearness of demonstration which 
some think it capable of, he helps not the matter. Be 
the cause what it will, our Saviour found mankind under 
a corruption of manners and principles, which ages after 
ages had prevailed, and, must be compassed, was not in 
a way or tendency to be mended. The rules of morality 
were, in different countries and sects, different. And 
natural reason nowhere had cured, nor was like to cure, 
the defects and errors in them. Those just measures of 
right and wrong, which necessity had anywhere intro- 
duced, the civil law prescribed, or philosophy recom- 
mended, stood not on their true foundations. They 



Gleanings for Bibic Readers. 1 1 7 

looked on as bonds of society, and conveniences of com- 
mon life, and laudable practices. But where was it that 
their obligation was thoroughly known and allowed, and 
they received as precepts of a law, the highest law, the 
law of nature? That could not be, without a clear 
knowledge and acknowledgement of the Law-maker, 
and the great rewards and punishments for those that 
would or would not obey Him. — -John Locke. 



BIBLE STUDY A GUARD AGAINST SPIRIT- 
UAL COLDNESS AND DECLINE. 

I have found there is no greater power to bind our 
hearts to a living Saviour, than the fruitful study of His 
Word. Its voice is pursuasive, helpful, sympathetic, 
strong, and inspiring. It is God's voice to us, and 
many of the happiest hours of my life have been spent, 
listening to that voice, through the Word, I have been 
carried above the smoke and dust of this lower air, up 
into the light and rest of God. Many a one is in dark- 
ness and doubt, because of living apart from the Word, 
and so apart from Christ who is the Word. The reason 
we are so often overcome by sin is because we go un- 
armed. Our armor is the Word, and no day dawns 
upon us, but before its close, we shall in some way 
need it. 

When I open God's Word, I find there the living 



1 1 8 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

presence of my Saviour. I meet a Friend who extends 
a hand of welcome. He leads me in the green pastures 
of His love. He feeds me with bread that strengthens 
and cheers me, and opens fountains of living water to 
my soul. He reveals to me the glory of the promised 
land beyond, and points me to those things that eye 
hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man con- 
ceived, laid up for those that love Him. In His sweet 
presence my burdens fall, my temptations vanish, my 
love is kindled anew, and my whole being upborne, as 
on eagle's wings. 

I find in the promises of the Bible a healing and 
remedy for every human ill and sinful mood. If I am 
beset with temptation, I read, ' ' Through God we shall 
do valiantly ; for it is God that shall tread down our 
enemies." If I am in grief, I* read, " As one whom his 
mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." If my feet 
have been sliding, I hear the voice of my blessed Lord, 
" Return unto me, and I will return unto you." If I 
am smarting under the chastening rod, I hear, " Whom 
the Lord loveth He chasteneth." If the weight of my 
sins is heavy, 4 T, even I, am He that blotteth out thy 
transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remem- 
ber thy sins." And so one after another my heart's 
longings and aspirations are met and satisfied. My 
soul is filled with the fullness of God, and I rest in His 
love. — Mrs. C. L. Goodell, in the Advance. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 119 



EFFECTS OF BIBLE READING ON THE HIN- 
DOOS. 

As to the Bible — Bible reading and effects of Bible 
study upon the Hindoo mind — I will simply give you 
illustrations of the effects of such reading ; cases that 
have either fallen under my own observation or those 
that are well vouched for by missionaries living in that 
country who have worked there. 

A young man who lived in a city in Central India, 
went to the house of the missionary to inquire for a po- 
sition. A copy of the Gospel of John was presented 
him ; he sat down upon the floor with the missionary 
and they read a chapter together at that time. He 
came again day after day, bringing other young men 
with him They were the students of a neighboring 
College, sons of persons of high caste. As they read 
the Gospel with the missionary they were deeply im- 
pressed. One of them asked, "Do you believe that 
this which we have read is intended by your God for us 
Hindoos? It would be difficult to depict rightly the joy 
they manifested, on hearing for the first time in their 
lives of the love of God, our Heavenly Father, and when 
assured that His love was ready to be bestowed upon 
any other part of the human race. This is the effect of 
Bible reading and Bible study without preaching. 

Another instance of reading the Bible Scriptures with- 
out even having any instruction is from a missionary : 
" A priest who had presided over a temple for forty 
years, picked up a single leaf containing a portion of 



120 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

John's Gospel. He read it in private. It created in him 
a longing desire for something more. He procured a 
New Testament and read it through. From the reading 
of that book his mind was so convinced of the truthful- 
ness thereof, that he said to himself, ' ' I will be a fol- 
lower of Jesus." He next read it to his wife and chil- 
dren, who resolved that they too would "follow Jesus. " 
Then he began to gather his townspeople under a tree 
in the bazaar and read portions to them. The Holy 
Spirit made it clear to their understandings. The influ- 
ential men of the town believed ; their images were dis- 
carded ; and a missionary coming to the place not long 
after found them longing for a deeper knowledge of the 
truth as it is in Jesus." 

Another instance : A torn leaf of a Testament which 
had been blown about in the highway was wrapped 
around some gold finger-rings sent to a jeweler sixteen 
hundred miles in the interior. As this jeweler unwrap- 
ped the package his eyes fell upon the words, "The 
blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." 
When he sent again for jewelry he sent also for a copy 
of the New Testament, and received one in the course 
of a few months. Like the old priest, he read it through 
alone, then to his family. But he was a rich man, and 
when it was found that his contributions to the idol 
temple fell off, he was anathematized, his family became 
estranged, his aged grandmother cursed him in the 
name of her god. He read on prayerfully and. alone. 
In a few days his grandmother and his family came back 
asking his forgiveness and begging to hear more about 
Jesus of Nazareth. He prayed and gave God thanks. 



Geanings for Bibe Readers. 1 2 1 

This blessed influence spread till it extended over the 
whole town. 

Another : A missionary traveling as an itinerant came 
to a certain town on the banks of a river. An old man 
and a young priest sat there on a great stone, sur- 
rounded by images of idols. As the people passed 
coming down from the mountains, they laid down their 
offerings, bowed to the priest and passed on to bathe ; to 
wash their sins away in the so-called Holy River. The 
missionary sat down near them and began to read the 
Testament. He read on and on, now and then giving a 
brief explanation. The people pause in passing — they 
forget the idols, they forget the river, they stop and 
listen — they are hearing something that they never 
heard before, and it enters into their hearts. The eyes 
of the old priest glisten with joy as he says, " Listen to 
his words, they are words of love — ne reads from a book 
of love." A runner went back to spread the news 
among the people on the mountains that a strange man 
is reading about one Jesus, and a God that so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son to die for sin- 
ners ! The people flocked about the missionary. After 
the services had continued three hours the missionary 
rose, and approaching the old priest asked him to give 
him the principal one of the idol images which stood 
near. After some time the old priest replied, »' Oh, no, 
I could not part with that for anything, it is my father's 
god," but after a little, yielding to his convictions, he 
rose, took the images in his hands, repeated again with 
tears in his eyes, " My god, my grandfather's god, my 
great grandfather's god — and I know not how many 
9 



122 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

generations it has been in my family — I give it to you, 
and take up Jesus who gave his life to rescue poor sin- 
ners." Then he kissed it and gave it to the missionary. 
— Elkanah Beard, in the Friends' Review. 



THE BIBLE AND THE REPUBLIC. 

The purpose of the Bible Society which has been or- 
ganized in this city is to bring the Word of God into 
contact with all the people. It has occurred to me that 
it might be well if we should turn our thoughts this 
evening to the influence of the Bible upon the temporal 
welfare of man: 

The scriptures have exhibited a wonderful efficacy in 
developing upon a large scale those qualities which make 
good citizens. This claim, at least, is put forth in their 
behalf, and if it can be shown to be a claim well founded, 
it will furnish one of the most powerful motives to lend 
energy and liberality to the friends of a society such as 
this. 

What I assert to-night is, that the Scriptures are the 
fountain and origin from which the streams of political 
health and virtue directly flow. If this can be demon- 
strated, it would seem that every man who claimed the 
character of a patriot, whether he wore the name of 
Christian or not, could be relied on for the support of an 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 123 

association designed to give all people the Holy Scrip- 
tures, and could be relied on also for the advocacy of 
every measure which, by bringing the public mind" in 
contact with the Bible, would contribute directly to mu- 
nicipal order and national prosperity.. The Bible is the 
best friend of a government such as ours, because it fur- 
nishes, as nothing else in the world does, the very ele- 
ments of character which are the life and stability of a 
republic. 

What are the essential elements of public prosperity 
in a republic ? They are these three : Intelligence, con- 
science, and an atmosphere of democracy. These are 
the things with which any republic can safely and surely 
stand. These are the three things without which a re- 
public will surely die. There must be a fair amount of 
popular intelligence; there must be a large development 
of the popular conscience ; there must be a general har- 
mony and fraternity of feeling among all classes of the 
population — a kind of democratic atmosphere abroad 
throughout the . land. These three elements are the 
bread, the water, and the air of any republic ; without 
them she cannot live ; and what I say now is, that the 
Bible is the source, the only source, from which these 
vital principles of republicanism have ever been drawn. 
It cannot be shown that, apart from the word of God, 
these elements and national qualities have ever been 
found in any population on the face of the earth ; cer- 
tainly they have never been found combined, or in any 
degree worthy of development. It is the part, therefore, 
of a true and wise republicanism — I use the word, of 
course, in its broad and general sense — to put honor 



124 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

upon the Bible. It is the part of men who love the re- 
public, and desire to see the second century of her life 
as noble as the first, and, if it please God, more peaceful 
and more illustrious still, to befriend every association 
and to advocate every measure which tends to bring the 
Bible, as a free, and honored, and welcome book, before 
all the population of the land. 

But I have dealt hitherto only in general assertions. 
It remains for me to substitute, by an appeal to facts, 
the position upon which the argument rests. It will be 
necessary for me to show that wherever there has been 
a free and open Bible, recognized and honored, and 
coming into unrestricted and welcome contact with the 
people, especially in their youth, there you will always 
find developed, to the very highest degree in which they 
have ever been seen on earth, those national qualities 
which I characterize as essential to our republican life. 
It will be still more conclusive if I can show that wher- 
ever the Bible has been put under an interdict, wher- 
ever it has been, by any influence, I care not what, de- 
graded and disgraced, clouded with suspicion and shut 
off from the public mind, there any man may be chal- 
lenged to find a people who have been in possession of 
those national qualities on which any republic lives, a 
people among whom there has been any great measure, 
either of popular intelligence, popular conscience, or 
fraternal and democratic principles. Let us survey the 
actul facts which present themselves on the face of hu- 
man affairs. Look at the lands of the earth, and you 
will find the position I have taken is sustained by an ex- 
amination of the particulars. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 125 

Look first at our own country. From the day it was 
founded we have had a free Bible. The word of God 
has never been bound in this land ; and what do you 
find ? You find the land all kindling with popular intel- 
ligence, dotted all over with colleges, and academies, 
and universities, and a vast system of seventy thousand 
public schools, with eight millions of children gathered 
into them, and being prepared there for all the respon- 
sibilities of future citizenship. 

Cross over to Scotland. Scotland is another country 
where the Bible has been eminently free ; and what is 
the condition of public intellect ? No country in Europe, 
unless it is Prussia, approaches it in the general popular 
intelligence which everywhere prevails. You do not find 
the Scotchmen, who come to Chicago, a set of ignor- 
amuses and blockheads. The Scotchmen, as a class, 
are our keen, educated, well-informed men, the men 
who make the very sinews of a republic like ours. They 
are so because they come from a country where popular 
instruction is carefully maintained, under the influence 
— because of the influence of an open Bible. Scotland is 
the first land on the face of the globe where public 
schools were organized ; and John Knox, a Presbyterian 
minister, was the man who did it. 

Let us step down south now, into England. Affairs 
are not quite so bright there ; and yet England has al- 
ways had a Bible substantially free. At least, this has 
been so for many hundred years ; and you will find, ac- 
cordingly, a very large amount of popular intelligence 
among the people of England. It is not strange, there- 
fore, that you also find there a republic, not under the 



1 26 Gleanings for Bible Readers, 

forms of a republic, but with all its essential characteris- 
tics. Horace White, of the Chicago Tribune, a keen and 
practical observer of public affairs, writes in the Fort- 
nightly Review, that England is more thoroughly a re- 
public to-day than America. She could not be so were 
it not for the popular intelligence which is diffused 
among her masses — illustrating again the influence of a 
free and open Bible. 

We may visit also the other constitutional govern- 
ments of Europe. Let us enter Prussia ; and there what 
do we find ? We find a government, at times, somewhat 
harsh, and yet a government built upon the principles of 
constitutional liberty ; we find a parliament which can- 
not be intimidated, and a press which cannot be 
long muzzled in the interest of oppression ; and we also 
find that, from the time of Martin Luther, the Bible has 
had free course throughout all Northern Germany. 
Germany, accordingly, has become the home of popular 
intelligence. Ninety-six per cent, of the population of 
Germany read. Only four per cent, of all the millions 
of Prussia are ignorant of their letters. 

Pass over now into France. At once we perceive a 
change. Here we have a country which, for many cen- 
turies, was virtually without the Bible. I do not now 
name any influences or powers to which that state of 
things was traceable ; I simply state it as a fact, an in- 
contestable fact, which no student of history will deny, 
that France has been largely* without the Bible ; that it 
has been, for many centuries of her history, a forbidden 
book — an embargo upon it from one end of the realm 
to the other. What is the result ? A great falling off 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. I2J 

in popular intelligence. By the last military census of 
the empire of France, issued in 1865, we are informed 
that thirty and one-half per cent, of the adult male pop- 
ulation of France do not know their letters. I am speak- 
ing, mark you, of the adult male population. In such 
a country as that, it will be found that the women are 
more ignoranat than the men, and the children more ig- 
norant than either. But if of her male adult population, 
according to her last official figures thirty and one-half 
per cent, did not know their letters and could not write 
their names, no wonder the republic has had rather a 
hard time of it in France. 

Cross over the Alps into Italy. The different portions 
of Italy differ greatly in respect to the degree of freedom 
which the Bible has enjoyed, and differ in a similar 
ratio in the degree of popular intelligence which may 
be found. But, for long centuries the Bible was inter- 
dicted over all the Italian peninsula, and the whole 
land, therefore, presents a corresponding ignorance. 
The tables of Signor Mattenci, ex-minister of public in- 
struction, present the facts. Let us begin with Lom- 
bardy, which, for thirty years, has been the most free 
and privileged part of Italy. It has been especially so 
since 1848. In Lombardy they have longest had a 
free Bible, and in Lombardy you will find a larger per- 
centage of the people who can read than in any other 
part of Italy — by no means a high degree of popular 
education, but more than elsewhere in Italy. In 1862, 
"of every 1,000 males in Lombardy, 536 were, more 
or less, able to read, and 461 did not know their letters. 
Of every 1,000 females, 426 could read, 574 could 



128 Gleanings for Bible Readers, 

not. That is, throughout the whole population, about 
one-half were able to read. " 

Going one step further south, we find that in Tus- 
cany, and the adjacent provinces, "of every 1,000 
males, 359 could read, leaving 641 who could not. Of 
every 1,000 females, 250 could read, 750 could not." 
A little over one-fourth of the whole population in these 
provinces could read. 

Passing still further south, we find that "in Naples 
and Sicily, of every 1,000 males, 165 were able to read, 
835 could not. Of every 1,000 females, 62 could read, 
938 could not. That is, in every 1,000 of the popula- 
tion, in the Neapolitan provinces, about 10 only were 
able to read." 

What a picture is this ! In the world-renowned Tus- 
cany, with Florence in its Centre, the home of Cosmo 
and Lorenzo de Medici, the patrons of letters and of 
art in Italy's golden days, a forbidden Bible for 200 
years, and, as a consequence, in every 1,000 people, 
740 who cannot read or write their names. In Naples, 
where the exclusion of the Bible has been carried to its 
greatest extent, of the men, only 165 in 1,000 who can 
read, and of the women, of every 1,000 only 62 ! ! 

Go from Italy to Spain, another non-Bible country. 
Spain has been for five hundred years without the Scrip- 
tures. What is the state of popular intelligence there ? 
Spain has fifteen millions of people. Of these fifteen 
millions, twelve millions do not know their letters, and 
there are barely one million, possibly two millions, in 
all Spain, who can write their names. No Bible, no 
popular intelligence. 1 will not comment upon these 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 129 

figures, for nothing can add to the force of the facts 
themselves. 

Have I not, then, established, upon a basis of sim- 
ple facts and official figures, my proposition that an 
open and honored Bible is the very best guarantee of 
popular intelligence which any land can secure ? Wher- 
ever this book is diffused and honored, and brought 
into contact with the youth, in that land, schools, col- 
leges, seminaries of learning of every grade are found, 
and a voting population possessing that quality of intel- 
ligence vital to democratic institutions ; wherever this 
book is put beneath a ban, kept from the people, there, 
for some reason, no matter now what the reason is, but 
there, for some reason, popular intelligence is at its low- 
est ebb. 

It will be in point, in connection with the bearing of 
the Bible on popular intelligence, to speak of its bearing 
on popular or national thrift. What is the reason that 
Italy, who once taught the world all the useful, as well 
as her elegant arts, must now employ foreign arti- 
zans to instruct her people; must call on strangers "to 
teach her to weave, to plant, to guide the wheel and 
ply the forge " ? What is the reason that foreign 
mechanics must be sent for to build her railroads and 
bridges ? What is the reason that there are no tools in 
Italy — or were not, ten years ago — and that when her 
railroad embankments must be raised, there were not 
wheelbarrows enough, and the peasantry must carry the 
baskets of dirt on their heads, as I have seen them do 
in degenerated Egypt ? What is the reason that, gen- 
erally, the factories of Italy have been manned by 



130 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

British artizans, her mines worked under foreign over- 
seers? How are we to explain this general lack of 
national thrift, and this comparative paralysis of com- 
merce, for many years, in the land of Dante and Colum- 
bus ? I find a marvelous connection between-the Bible 
and the presence of national thrift and the development 
of commerce. The lands which have the Bible are the 
lands of commerce, of wealth. Is it not so ? Where is 
the commerce of Mexico, from which the Bible is ex- 
cluded, and where, lately, the Bible of one of our mis- 
sionaries I saw stained with the blood of the man who 
had been converted to its faith ? What is the com- 
merce of Mexico ? What is the commerce of Spain in 
comparison with that of Holland, with her open Bible ? 
What is the commerce of South America combined — 
where the Bible has been prohibited for a hundred 
years — what is her total commerce, compared with that 
of Great Britain, with a Bible open in every house and 
every school? These things deserve consideration 
from all American citizens, from all that believe it is 
right, and that it is obligatory upon us, to guard 
the temporal prosperity of the land. — From an address 
delivered at the thiiiy -fifth anniversary of tlie Chicago Bible 
Society, by the Rev. Arthur Mitchell, D. D. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 3 1 



THE OLD MAN'S BIBLE-BOX. 

I wish that every reader of the Gleanings for the 
Young, and every one interested in the circulation of 
God's blessed book, could have been with me one day 
last autumn. I was staying with a dear friend in a little 
watering-place in the west of England, and was asked to 
go with her to the cottage of a man in very feeble health 
to open the Bible Society's box, that he might send its 
contents to the Bible House, in London, to be spent in 
sending the good news to those who are perishing for 
lack of it. 

I had often heard of J. H., but had never seen him 
before. I had heard of him as one who had run into 
every excess of riot — as one who had done evil with 
both hands earnestly. So wicked had he been, that 
those who knew him were almost ready to give up all 
hope of his ever being changed. But God so loved him 
that he would not let him ever continue in these paths 
of sin. 

He was suddenly struck down by bleeding from the 
lungs. In love was his affliction sent ; the blasphemer 
was led to think of that world to which he seemed then 
hastening, and of the account that he would have to 
render when he met his Judge — and he trembled. Con- 
science told him of misspent time and strength, and he 
feared to face Him whose love he had despised, whose 
warnings he had disregarded. The Holy Spirit strove 
with him, convinced him of sin, and eventually led him 
to the only safe shelter — Jesus, the Rock of Ages. 



132 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

Then, knowing what peace and pardon were, J. H. 
longed to lead others to the same happiness that he en- 
joyed. He opened his cottage for a Sunday afternoon 
meeting, which was well attended, and feeling the 
preciousness of God's word, he wished to help in its cir- 
culation ; so he requested that he might have a Bible- 
box, for which he earnestly strove to get contributions, 
and succeeded so well that though he only had it a few 
months when I went to see it opened, there were nearly 
14^. in it. 

I wish you could have seen his face when the money 
was counted out, and how, looking at his own open Bible, 
he told us, that feeling the preciousness of that, he did 
want to send it to others, adding, " Please seal up the 
box, and let me have it again." But disease was slowly, 
but surely, workiug J. H.'s weakened frame, and he 
now has heard the Master's call, "Come up higher." 

He lingered through the winter, still doing what he 
could for the funds of the Bible Society, and a few days 
before he died the box was again opened and counted, 
\\s. 11 y 2 d. The meeting of the society was held in the 
village where he lived, just at that time, and the clergy- 
man announced the amount of J. H.'s box, and referred 
to his efforts. Surely J. H. was a trophy of that grace 
that willeth not the death of a sinner. 

And now a few words to you who read this little 
sketch. Are you doing all in your power to spread the, 
good news contained in God's book ? Can you say, as 
J. H. did on his dying bed, "I have done what I 
could?" J. H. will not have lived in vain if this little 
account of his efforts leads others to seek yet more ear- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 133 

nestly to circulate the Bible, and stir up those who have 
not yet begun, to try if they cannot share in the joy that 
is left in knowing that you have helped to send the 
Scriptures to others. 

Let each reader of these Gleanings have a Bible-box, 
and seek to glean all the coins they can, ever asking 
God's blessing upon the money collected, and His ac- 
ceptance of it, that so it maybe blessed. — By E. A. E., 
in Gleanings for the Young. 



LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS. 

On Monday, the Bible woman, in search of some one, 
was directed to a goldsmith's house, to which she had 
never gone before. But she found six or seven women, 
all strangers, save one ; and this was our dear old friend, 
which had come for a jewel which had been repaired. 
As soon as she saw the Bible-woman, she exclaimed, 
" Now, come right in and sit down, and we will have a 
good time ; " (looking at the woman) — " she will tell 
you glad and wonderful things," she cheerfully said; 
and turning again to the Bible-woman, she said to her, 
"Tell them about feeding the five thousand. " This the 
Bible-woman did ; and before a pause could follow the 
reading of the story, the old woman said, " That's just 
like Him — the Lord — the Saviour ; He can do all such 
things." Again commanding the Bible-woman — "Now, 



1 34 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

tell them about how He came out of the grave, and 
went, like a King, up into the golden heavens. He be- 
gun the world like the rest of us poor sinners, but He 
went the way back like a king." 

The Bible-woman paused in her account, to say that 
the woman had been impressed with one of my conver- 
sations about our Lord's rising from the dead, and the 
ascension, and was continually eager to hear her read 
the accounts of these great events. She seems to feel 
as if it was a journey she was going to take with Him, 
and she could never hear enough. 

So the Bible-woman described the resurrection and 
the ascension ; and the ejaculations and exclamations of 
our friend, she said, added a convincing power to those 
heathen women that she could not describe. 

" How did you feel under such leadership ? ' I 
asked. 

"I have no words to tell you," was the reply. " Such 
joy and satisfaction as it was to have her to tell me what 
to talk about, and to see her belief impressed those 
women ! Why, I never was in such a scene in my life." 
This was not all. " Now," said our dear old friend, " I 
wish to tell you myself how this Lord of ours, not only 
came Himself out of the grave, but He calls others out 
the same way. I will tell you about a man whose name 
was Lazarus." Then, continued the Bible-woman, she 
told the whole story, and you should have seen those 
women's eyes hang on her lips. As soon as she had 
finished she turned to me, and in the tenderest, softest 
voice she said : \ ' Now tell, them about His five wounds. " 
So, having beheld His power and His glory, they were 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 135 

to witness His sorrow and sufferings, this dear woman 
herself saying that this also was what He had done for 
us. She closed this memorable meeting by saying to 
them, "This Lord and Saviour is mine. He has saved 
me. I live in this Market Street, like you all, but I 
have heard about Him, and I have come to know it is 
true. It is here in my heart. These women who read 
the Bible will help you, just as they helped me. If a 
poor old woman like me can understand them, anybody 
can. The Lord began to bless me just as soon as I 
began to give Him something. The first time I went to 
church where they worship Him, I gave Him my money, 
and He has blessed me ever since. The first thing I do 
on Monday morning is to get my piece of money for 
the next Sunday, and put it up high, where I can see it 
all the week, and nothing would make me touch it. If 
I wanted change ever so much, I would not touch that. 
That is for the Lord, and it belongs to Him all the week. 
We must always keep something ready in the house for 
the Lord." 

Every Sunday, when the contribution is collected, this 
faithful creature rises deliberately, drops her coin, folds 
reverently her hands, sometimes closes her eyes, and 
sometimes raises them toward Heaven ; and I doubt not 
the Lord sees that the offering is given to Him. I am 
filled with solemn questioning, whenever I see it, 
whether we long-time Christian givers would not do 
wisely and well to follow her example. — By Mrs. W. B. 
Capron, in Life and Light for Women. 



136 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 



THE WORD OF GOD ONLY. 

The formal principle of evangelic Christianity is this : 
The Word of God only. That is to say, the Christian 
receives the knowledge of the truth only by the Word 
of God, and admits of no other source of religious 
knowledge. He who would know and possess the 
truth, in order to be saved, ought to study that revela- 
tion of God which is contained in the sacred Scriptures, 
and to reject every thing which is of a mere human 
addition — every thing which, as the work of man, may 
be justly suspected of being impressed with a deplorable 
mixture of error. There is only one source at which the 
Christian quenches his thirst ; it is that stream, clear, 
limpid, perfectly pure, which flows from the throne of 
God. He turns away from every other fountain which 
flows parallel with it, or which would fain mingle itself 
with it ; for He knows that on account of the source 
whence these streams issue, they all contain trouble, 
unwholesome, perhaps deadly waters. The sole, the 
ancient, the eternal stream, is God ; the new, ephemeral, 
failing stream, is Man ; and we will quench our thirst but 
in God alone. God is, in our view, so full of sovereign 
majesty, that we would regard as an outrage, and even 
as impiety, the attempt to put anything by the side of 
His Word. 

We reject tradition, as it is a species of rationalism 
which introduces for a rule in Christian doctrine, not 
the human reason of the present time, but the human 
reason of times past. We declare, with the churches of 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 137 

the Reformation in their symbolical writings (confes- 
sions of faith), that "the sacred Scriptures are the only 
judge, the only rule of faith ; that it is to them, as to a 
touchstone, that all dogmas ought to be brought ; that 
it is by them that the question should be decided, 
whether they are pious or impious, true or false;" 

Without doubt there was originally an oral tradition 
which was pure ; it was the instructions given by the 
apostles themselves, before the sacred writings of the 
New Testament existed. However, even then, the 
apostle and the evangelist, Peter and Barnabas, could 
not walk uprightly, and, consequently, stumbled in their 
words. The Divinely inspired Scriptures alone are in- 
fallible ; the Word of the Lord endureth forever. But, 
however pure oral instruction may have been at the 
time that the apostles left the earth, that tradition was 
necessarily exposed in this world of sin, to be gradually 
defaced, polluted and corrupted. It is for this cause 
that the Evangelic Church honors and adores, with 
gratitude and humility, the gracious good pleasure of 
the Saviour, in virtue of which, that pure, primitive 
type, that first, apostolic tradition, in all its purity, has 
been rendered permanent by being written, by the Spirit 
of God Himself, in our sacred books, for all coming 
time. And now it finds in those writings, as we have 
just heard, the Divine touchstone which it employs for 
the purpose of trying all the traditions of men. 

Nor does it establish, concurrently, as do the doctors 
of Oxford, and the Council of Trent, the tradition which 
is written and the tradition which is oral; but it decid- 
edly renders the latter subordinate to the former be- 

10 



138 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

cause one can not be sure that this oral tradition is only 
and truly the apostolical tradition, such as it was in its 
primitive purity. The knowledge of true Christianity, 
says the Protestant Church, flows only from one source, 
namely, from the Holy Scriptures, or, if you will, from 
the apostolic tradition, such as we find it contained in the 
writings of the New Testament. The apostles of Jesus 
Christ — Peter, Paul, John, Matthew, James — perform 
their fuctions in the church to-day ; no one has the need 
nor the power to take their place. They perform their 
functions at Jerusalem, at Geneva, at Corinth, at Berlin, 
at Paris ; they bear testimony in Oxford and in Rome 
itself. They preach, even to the ends of the world, the 
remission of sins and the conversion of the soul in the 
name of the Saviour ; they announce the resurrection of 
the Crucified to every creature ; they loose and they 
retain sins ; they lay the foundation of the house of God, 
and they build it ; they teach the missionaries and the 
ministers of the gospel ; they regulate the order of the 
church, and preside in synods which would be Christian. 
They do all this by the written Word which they have 
left us ; or, rather, Christ — Christ Himself — does it by 
that Word, since it is the Word of Christ, rather than 
the word of Paul, of Peter, or of James. "Go ye, 
therefore, and teach all nations ; lo ! I am with you al- 
ways, even unto the end of the world." * * 

Without doubt, we acknowledge that the declarations 
of Christian Divines merit our attention, if it be the 
Holy Spirit which speaks in them — that Spirit which is 
ever living and ever acting in the church. But we will 
not — we absolutely will not — allow ourselves to be 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 139 

bound by that which, in this tradition, and in these 
Divines, is only the work of man. And how shall we 
distinguish that which is of God from that which is of 
men, if not by the Holy Scriptures? " It remains, " 
says St. Augustine, "that I judge myself according to 
this only Master, from whose judgment I desire not to 
escape." The declarations of the doctors of the church 
are only the testimonies of the faith which these eminent 
men had in the doctrines of the Scriptures. They show 
how these Divines received these doctrines. They 
may, without doubt, be instructive and edifying for us ; 
but there is no authority in them which binds us. All 
the Divines — Greek, Latin, French, Swiss, German, 
English, American — placed in the presence of the Word 
of God, are only disciples who are receiving instruction. 
Men of primitive days, and men of modern times — we 
are all alike scholars in that Divine school ; and in the 
chair of instruction, around which we are humbly 
assembled, nothing appears, nothing exalts itself by the 
infallible Word of God. I perceive in that vast audi- 
tory, Calvin, Luther, Cranmer, Augustine, Crysostom, 
Athanasius, Cyprian, by the side of our contemporaries. 
We are not the " disciples of Cyprian and Ignatius, " as 
the doctors of Oxford call themselves, but of Jesus 
Christ. " We do not despise the writings of the 
fathers," we say, with Calvin; "but in making use of 
them, we remember always, that ' all things are ours; ' 
that they ought to serve, not to govern us, and that 
1 we, we are Christ's whom in all things, and without 
exception, it behooves us to obey.' " This the Divines 
of the first centuries are themselves the first to say. 



140 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

They claim for themselves no authority, and only wish 
that the Word which has taught them may teach us 
also. "Now that I am old," says Augustine, in his 
"Retractions" "I do not expect not to be mistaken 
in word, or to be perfect in word ; how much less when, 
being young, I commenced writing." " Beware," says 
he again, of submitting to my writings, as if they were 
canonical Scriptures." "Do not esteem a% canonical 
Scriptures the works of catholic and justly honored 
men," says he elsewhere. " It is allowed for us, with- 
out impeaching the honor which is due to them, to 
reject those things in their writings, should we find such 
in them, which are contrary to the truth. I regard the 
writings of others as I would have others to regard 
mine." "All that has been said since the times of the 
apostles, ought to be disregarded," says Jerome, "and 
can possess no authority. However holy, however 
learned, a man may be, who comes after the apostles, 
let him have no authority." " To the law and to the 
testimony /" The Word of God only ! — D ' Aubigne. 



THE BIBLE-READING ENGINEER. 

The " Gold Leaf Express " was waiting the usual 

half-hour at P , in order to connect with the 

northern mail. 

While my party were regaling themselves on muddy 
coffee, in the little restaurant near by, I gladly availed 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 14 1 

myself of the opportunity to indulge in a brisk walk, up 
and down the long depot platform, after my wearisome 
ride from Cleveland. 

While enjoying the grateful exercise, I could not 
help noticing the huge, shapely built locomotive as it 
stood with its bright cylinder, dome, whistle, and the 
polished letters "Jupiter" on its jacket, glistening in 
the sun on that pleasant November day. 

The engineer, a stoutly-built, gray-haired man, was 
" oiling " and making everything ready for the onward 
trip with the absorbed air of one who feels that he is 
entirely by himself, a demeanor which is usually notice- 
able in an engineer who feels the responsibility of his 
position. 

The kindly expression of his face as he glanced up to 
me when I paused a moment, admiring the shining 
brass of the cylinders, which were polished to the last 
degree of brilliancy, encouraged me to accost him with 
the common-place remark — 

" You have run a locomotive a good many years, sir, 
I presume." 

" Long enough to have learned the trade pretty thor- 
oughly," he replied, rather curtly. But I was not to 
be easily rebuffed, for I meant to assure him that mine 
was not a mere passing curiosity, and I went on, " You 
have a splendid machine, and it is beautifully taken 
care of, as such an engine deserves to be. It is a 
Rogers, I see, with an improved Bissel truck. Do you 
like it?" 

" It's the best six- wheeler that ever was run," replied 
the engineer, his face now kindling with surprised pleas- 



142 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

ure; " and as for the trucks, nothing could be better, it 
seems to me. But I don't often see a lady who knows 
a Rogers from a Danforth, or a Hickley, or any other 
builder, for that matter." 

After a few explanations, which elicited the fact that 
he had been personally acquainted with my brother, he 
grew communicative. 

(( I have run on this road twenty-five years," said he; 
" first as a fireman, then they set me up to drive a 
switch engine. I went from that to a gravel train, from 
that to freight, and now I have the best machine and 
the best ' run ' on the road. The ' Gold Leaf Express * 
they call it along the line ; the sleeping cars, the Pull- 
man palace cars, the tender and my cab, are all so elab- 
orately painted and gilded." 

" I was noticing how they all were glistening in this 
bright sunlight," I said. " I suppose, from the fact of 
your many promotions on the road, you have met with 
uninterrupted good luck, based of course, on your con- 
scientious carefulness." 

"I have never met with an accident that was at- 
tended with serious results, thank God," he replied, 
not in the brawling tone of an oath, but reverently, 
" and I think that one reason of it comes from the fact 
that I always carry my Bible in the cab. Do you see it 
up there? " and he pointed up to the prettily upholstered 
cab, where, just in front of the engineer's seat, between 
the steam gauge and the lookout window, on a bracket- 
like device, a small Bible was held open where the eyes 
of this Christian engineer could fall upon its pages at 
any moment. 



Gleanings for Bible* Readers. 143 

' ' I have read the good book from back to back sev- 
eral times at home," continued he, '• and by having it 
placed here in this manner before me I have been able 
to commit many passages to memory. Sometimes it has 
been a wonderful comfort to me ; one time in particular, 
the strength as well as comfort I derived from one 
glance at a passage on the open page was 'astonishing. '' 

" How was that? " I asked, greatly interested. 

" Well, madam, it is something I seldom speak of," 

said he, handing up his oil-can to the fireman, and wiping 

his hands on a bunch of cotton waste, "but I don't 

*mind telling you now — yes, there is time," glancing at 

the pretty clock in the cab. 

''You see, I was running on the lower end of the 
road at that time, and my train was an ' express pass- 
enger ' which came out of the city before nightfall, 
usually with a dozen or so heavily loaded coaches. 
Perhaps you remember, if you have been over the road 

so much, where the track crosses the river, which, 

you know, is the inlet to the harbor. Being a port of 
considerable importance, of course provision has to be 
made for the shipping to pass above. 

1 ' There was a man stationed at this post to signal to 
the approaching trains whether the bridge was open or 
not. Yes, it was a dangerous place (the means to avert 
danger there are better now), but after I had run over 
the bridge twice a day for eighteen months or more, 
and had always found everything all right, I came to look 
upon that point the same as I did upon any other piece 
of the road. 

" My express was a fast train always, and on the 



144 Gleanings* for Bible Readers. 

night of which I am speaking I was a little behind time, 
and so running even somewhat faster than usual in 
order to make up. As I approached the bridge I 
looked for the signal, as it was second nature for me to 
do. The flagman gave the customary all-right signal, 
standing, as usual, on a rock at the point of a curve of 
the track leading around the river. 

' ' I had no more time than barely to notice that the 
man was a new hand, in place of ' Lame Jim, ' whom I 
had, without a single exception, always found at the 
post, before we came in full view of the bridge. To 
my horror it was wide open, and a gulf of nearly fifty 
feet in depth was yawning before me and my ponderous 
train ! 

" I glanced up to my open Bible and my eyes fell on 
the words : ' I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. ' 
The benumbing sense of utter helplessness that for the 
instant had pervaded both soul and body as it were, all 
vanished now, and I became as calm as you see me at 
this moment. 

" You know, madam, that the duties of a locomotive 
engineer are such that oftentimes he has to decide (it 
may be only on a mere movement of his hand, or 
the kind of a look he gives his fireman) — in such a 
terrible exigency especially — in the shortest conceivable 
space of time. In this instance I had no time to con- 
sider, and if I had I suppose I should have done ex- 
actly as I did ; whistle for brakes (it was before air- 
brakes came into use) and reverse my engine. 

" The fireman did not need to be told to do his best 
upon the tender brakes, as he rapidly tightened them 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 145 

up with the whole swinging force of his huge body. It 
was a clean, dry track, everything in good condition, 
and I think never a train with like facilities, was brought 
to a stand-still on shorter notice. For that first, almost 
bewildering instant to me, the belief in the impossbility 
of escaping* that imminent, fearful plunge, so possessed 
me with a cold feeling like the coils of a snake down 
my back, that it was with an almost superhuman effort 
that I mustered muscular force to raise my hand to the 
whistle-valve chord, reach the regulator, or grasp the 
reversing handle. 

" But we came to a dead halt just as the point of the 
cow-catcher overlapped this frightful chasm ! Had the 
impelling force of that long passenger train carried us a 
few feet further on, there would have been the worst 
railroad catastrophe that ever happened in America, and 
my name would surely have swelled the list of the 
drowned and mangled ones that would have appeared 
in the newspapers. 

" As it was, the escape never got into the papers at 
all. The bridge was swung into place so quickly, and 
we were under way again so soon after the customary 
stop at the draw, that I suppose very few of the passen- 
gers ever knew of the threatened peril. We were miles 
away before the reaction came to me, as I sat trembling 
on my seat with the full, apprehending sense of our es- 
cape tiding through my brain. 

"The flagman ? Oh yes, he was drunk. You see 
there had been a new superintendent chosen, and he had 
commenced business by turning oft* some of the old em- 
ployes and putting in new ones. Poor, faithful ' Lame 



146 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

Jim ' had been discharged and this fellow installed in his 
place. He was celebrating his appointment to this re- 
sponsible post over a jug of rum, which was found after- 
ward in the little signal house near by. 

"Jim was reinstated next day, but the company was 
so chagrined over the unwarrantable action qn the part 
of the superintendent, that the matter was kept as close 
as possible. I went to the office the next morning and 
resigned my position ; I couldn't bear to run over that 
end of the road again. They would not let me off the 
road; but gave me this train on this end of the route — 
the ' Gold Leaf Express. ' 

" Xo, I don't suppose I have quite got over the shock 
to my nerves, for frequently, when I go to bed more 
tired than usual, I wake with a start from a sort of far- 
off dream of that eventful night-fall trip, the uncertain 
light, the still shimmering water, and the white scared 
face of my fireman. My hair was as black as coals then ; 
in three months it became as gray as you see it now. 

"Yes'm, that's the northern mail coming — oh, you 
are welcome, although it's a story I'm not fond of tell- 
ing — good bye." — From the Christian Secretajy. 



"THE WORD." 

f 
The Bible has this great characteristic ; no man is able 

to comprehend all its truth. Men of different personal 

peculiarities see such sides of it as are specially appli- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 147 

capable to their temperaments and wants. It is true to- 
day for chronology, to-morrow for history ; now for its 
prophetic imagery, and then for its promises. But, 
while no man can comprehend the whole, each can find 
what is amply sufficient for himself. It has something 
in it for men of all classes and men of all conditions. 
The preacher reads in the Book of the Law, and gets its 
sense. He translates its Oriental idioms into western 
speech ; its past tenses into those of the present. He 
searches its pages to find something for every form of 
human experience. It is a perpetual fountain from 
which issues the Water of Life. It is the armory from 
which the Christian soldier is equipped. We are under 
orders — marching orders. We have received our in- 
structions from the General-in-chief. Shall we not read 
every line and study the meaning of every word ? There 
are orders for ourselves personally, orders for our con- 
gregations, orders for to-day, and orders for to-morrow. 
The more frequently they are read the better they are 
understood, the more easily and perfectly they can be 
obeyed. V 

The New Testament is peculiarly rich it its precious 
promises ; yet it is, in great measure, an explanation of 
the Old. The titles of Christ were given in prophecy ; 
his work was typified and his vicarious atonement was 
foreshadowed in sacrifices. Everywhere a line of illus- 
tration runs through the Old Testament, which is more 
perfectly developed by the New, like the plant which 
sends its roots deep into the soil, but unfolds its leaves 
and blossoms to the sunshine and the air. There are 
golden threads which run all through the woof from the 



1 48 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

beginning to the end. There are clasps which enclose 
both Genesis and Revelations and make them one. 

Take as an illustration, that first verse in St. John's 
Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God." To me 
it points directly to the creation of the world and garden 
of Eden. On the dwellers in Eden there came down a 
cloud of darkness, an impressive portent of wretchedness 
and woe. The gates were to be closed and cherubims 
guard the entrance. In this thick darkness, one ray 
of light pierced through from the throne of God ; one 
word, one promise brought hope to the human heart. 
That word was spoken to the serpent, but Eve heard it : 
"I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and 
between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head, 
and thou shalt bruise his heel." Without that word, that 
promise of a Redeemer, earth had been without joy, life 
without hope. That word Eve hid in her heart. When 
she drew to her bosom her first-born son, I fancy she 
thought that the promised seed had come, for she called 
him Cain. "For," she said, "I have gotten a man 
from the Lord." She hoped that he was to bruise the 
serpent's head and reopen the gates of Paradise. How 
sad her heart when her hopes were disappointed and she 
saw his hands stained with the blood of Abel ! Child 
after child was born ; children's children came to ma- 
turity ; generation after generation arose ; but mankind 
grew worse and worse, and no Redeemer came. 

For nine hundred and thirty years Adam watched 
and waited, but no Messiah appeared. Yet that promise 
of hope was handed down from generation to generation. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 149 

It was God's word that a Deliverer should come. Ages 
rolled on. In the midst of prevailing darkness there 
came a ray of light to Enoch, and he prophesied, " Be- 
hold ! the Lord cometh." The earth was swept with 
water, and the nations waited century after century, this 
one word standing as the only light of human faith and 
hope, The promise was repeated to Abraham and taken 
up by the prophets. The Psalmist heard the voice of 
the coming Saviour : " Lo, I come to do Thy will, O 
God." This was the only word of life and hope that, 
while generations passed away like grass, endured for- 
ever. It filled the mind of the apostle when he wrote : 
" The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and 
we beheld His glory, the glory of as the only begotten 
of the Father, full of grace and truth." 

This was the Word, the Logos, alike of the Old Testa- 
ment and the New, promised in Eden, manifested in 
Bethlehem, announced by the angel of the Lord to the 
wandering shepherds as " good tidings of great joy, 
which should be to all people ; " and then follows that 
beautiful declaration : " Suddenly there was with the 
angel a multitude of heavenly host praising God, and 
saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, 
good will toward men." 

As Miriam led the songs of the daughters of Israel, at 
the passage of the Red Sea, eighty years old though she 
was, so it has seemed to me that Eve, the mother of us 
all, led the rapturous song of that heavenly host, as, 
after four thousand years waiting, she saw the advent of 
the promised Redeemer. 

In the Book of Revelation, Christ again appears. He 



150 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

is called the " Faithful and True." He has bruised the 
head of the serpent, and it is added : ' ' And He was 
clothed with a vesture dipped in blood, and His name is 
called the Word of God." I cannot help turning away 
with a sense of relief from the interpretation which 
makes the apostle, who leaned on Jesus' breast, seek 
among the Gnostics for that logos, the shadow of which 
they had learned from tradition, while the substance 
itself is found in the promise made by the Father. — 
Bishop Simpson 's Yale Lectures. 



"SWEETER THAN HONEY." 

My caption is not taken from Samsons question, but 
from David's assertion. The former implies that noth- 
ing is sweeter than honey; the latter states positively 
that God's word is. 

And yet how meagre David's Bible was, compared 
with ours. He had the five books of Moses, Joshua, 
Judges, and Ruth, and Job, and that was all; but he 
loved God's law, and it was sweeter than honey to his 
mouth. The canon has long since been completed and 
closed, and now with the poetical and prophetical books, 
the gospel and epistles, our Bible is far richer than 
David's. Is ours as dear to us as his was to him ? 

What treasures of history does it contain ? the only 
reliable narrative for the first 2, 500 years of the history 



Geanings for Bible Readers. 151 

of our race. The Hindoos claim great antiquity for their 
sacred writings, the Vedas ; but they were not written 
for five hundred years after Moses ; and Job is a thous- 
and years older than Homer. 

What a rage fiction has had, and still has, and es- 
pecially with the young ; and yet the simple Scriptural 
story of Abraham, or Jacob, or Joseph, or Moses, and 
above all, of Jesus, is more charming and entrancing 
than any fiction, which is but husks compared with the 
sincere milk of the Word. 

It is said that Rufus Choate made a daily study of the 
classics throughout his brilliant legal practice, as the 
best mental discipline and stimulus. The Bible shows 
a better furniture still, as is shown in the loftiest flight of 
eloquence of Webster and others. 

And what a book it has been for our own and other 
Christian nations. An African prince once sent an em- 
bassage to Victoria to learn the secret of England's 
success and glory. She did not point them to her crown 
jewels, worth twenty millions of dollars, or to her proud 
navy ; but sent a handsome copy of the Bible, saying, 
11 Tell the prince this is the secret of England's great- 
ness!" How insane and suicidal the persistent efforts 
of the Romanists to rob us of the Bible, since it has 
made our land what it is. 

An infidel young lawyer made it his boast that he 
would locate where there were no churches, Sabbath 
schools, or Bibles. He found his place at the 
west, but in six months he wrote to an old classmate, a 
young minister, begging him to come out, and bring a 
plenty of Bibles, and preach, and start a Sabbath school, 



152 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

as he had become convinced that a place without any 
Christian, and churches, and Bibles was too much like 
hell for any living man to stay in. So, if we give the 
infidels plenty of rope it may be they will hang them- 
selves. 

But how refreshing is the present revival of Bible 
study, both by the people generally in the International 
lessons, and by scholars delving deeper than ever into 
the true meaning of the original ; and as one has said, 
" the more we study the sweeter will it grow ; " even as 
to David, " Sweeter than honey." — By Rev. Chester 
Bridgeman, in the Religions Herald. 



TWO WAYS OF READING THE BIBL^. 

"|Wouldyou like another chapter, Lilian dear? " asked 
Kate Everard of the invalid cousin,^ to nurse whom she 
had lately come from Hampshire. 

" Not now, thanks ; my head is tired," was the feeble 
reply. 

Kate closed her Bible with a feeling of slight disap- 
pointment. She knew that Lilian was slowly sinking 
under incurable disease, and what could be more suit- 
able to the dying than to be constantly hearing the Bible 
read ? Lilian might surely listen, if she were too weak 
to read to herself. Kate was never easy in mind unless 
she perused at least two or three chapters daily, besides 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 153 

a portion of the Psalms, and she had several times gone 
through the whole Bible from beginning to end. And 
here was Lilian, whose days on earth might be few, 
tired with one short chapter ! 

"There must be something wrong here," thought 
Kate, who had never during her life kept her bed for 
one day through sickness. " It is a sad thing when the 
dying do not prize the Word of God." Such was the 
hard thought which passed through the mind of Kate, 
and she felt it her duty to speak on the subject to Lilian, 
though she scarcely knew how to begin. "Lilian," 
said Kate, trying to soften her naturally quick, sharp 
tones to gentleness, " I should have thought that now, 
when you are so ill, you would. have found special com- 
fort in the Scriptures." 

Lilian's languid eyes had closed, but she opened 
them, and, with a soft earnest gaze on her cousin, re- 
plied, " I do — they are my support , I have been feed- 
ing on one verse all the morning." 

" And what is that verse? " asked Kate. 

"Whom I shall see for myself, " began Lilian, slowly; 
but Kate cut her short — 

"I know that verse perfectly — it is in Job ; it comes 
just after ' I know that my Redeemer liveth ; ' the verse 
'is, 'When I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
behold, and not another.' " 

" What do you understand by the expression, 'not 
another ? ' " asked Lilian. 

"Why, of course, it means — well, it just means, I 

suppose, that we shall see the Lord ourselves," replied 

Kate, a little puzzled by the question ; for though she 
11 



154 Gleanings for Bible Readers, 

had read the text a hundred times, she had never once 
dwelt on its meaning. 

"Do you think/' said Lilian, rousing herself a 
little," that the last three words are merely a repetition 
of ' when I shall see for myself ? ' " 

' ' Really, I have never so particularly considered those 
words, " answered Kate. "Have you found out any 
remarkable meaning in that ' not another ? ' " 

" They were a difficulty to me," replied the invalid, 
" 'till I happened to read that in the German Bible they 
are rendered a little differently ; and then I searched in 
my own Bible, and found that the word in the margin 
of it is like that in the German translation." 

"I never look at the marginal references," said 
Kate, " though mine is a large Bible, and has them." 

" I find them such a help in comparing Scripture with 
Scripture," observed Lilian. 

Kate was silent for several seconds. She had been 
careful daily to read a large portion from the Bible ; but 
to " mark, learn, and inwardly digest it," she had never 
even thought of trying to do. In a more humble tone 
she now asked her cousin, " What is the word which is 
put in the margin of Bible instead of ' another,' in that 
difficult text?" 

" A stranger," replied Lilian ; and then, clasping her 
thin, wasted hands, she repeated the whole passage on 
which her soul had been feeding with silent delight, 
' ' * Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
behold, and not a stranger.' Oh, Kate," continued 
the dying girl, while unbidden tears rose to her eyes, 
1 ' if you only knew what sweetness I have found in that 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 155 

verse all this morning while I have been in great bodily 
pain ! I am in the Valley of Shadow — I shall soon 
cross the dark river ; I know it ; but He will be with 
me, and 'not a stranger.' He is the Good Shepherd, 
and I know His voice ; a stranger would I not follow. 
And when I open my eyes in another world, it is the 
Lord Jesus whom I shall behold — my own Saviour, my 
own tried Friend, and ' not a stranger ; ' I shall at last 
see Him whom, not having seen, I have loved." 

Lilian closed her eyes again, and the large drops, 
overflowing, fell down her pallid cheeks ; she had 
spoken too long for her strength. But the feeble suf- 
ferer's words had not been spoken in vain. 

1 ' Lilian has drawn more comfort and profit from one 
verse — nay, from three words in the Bible, than I have 
drawn from the whole book," reflected Kate. I have 
but read the Scriptures, she has searched them. I have 
been like one floating carelessly over the surface of 
waters under which lie pearls ; Lilian has dived deep, 
and made the treasure her own." 

Let me earnestly recommend the habit of choosing 
from our morning portion of the Bible, some few words 
to meditate over during the day. At a mother's meet- 
ing which I attend, each of the women in her turn gives 
a text to be remembered daily by all during the week ; 
and in every family such a custom might be found help- 
ful. It is by praying over, resting on, feeding on God's 
word, that we find it is indeed spirit and life, and to the 
humble, contrite heart, " sweeter than honey and the 
honeycomb." — By A. L. 0, E, in the Bible Society 
Record. 



156 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 



A TRANSLATED BIBLE IS THE WORD OF 

GOD. 

Having shown, in a previous sermon, that the Hebrew 
and Greek text of the Scriptures is one that is more 
accurate, pure and entire than that of any other ancient 
book, I proceed to consider the validity of the author- 
ized version. 

It is urged that infallible inspiration cannot attach to 
translations. This objection should be calmly met. At 
the outset let it be remembered that the unity of race 
and language is taught distinctly in the Bible. Ethnol- 
ogy and comparative philology are every year coming 
into complete accord with Scriptural accounts. Man is 
one. His speech is one, though there are over 860 
languages. Languages being originally the same, the same 
ideas expressed in one pass into another by translations. 
The more perfect in form, inflections, and the like, the 
easier the work of translating. The Hebrew and Greek 
were chosen. They are wonderfully adapted to the 
end proposed by their capacity and richness. The 
English version, also, is preeminently excellent, the 
fruit of three years labor of forty-seven eminent 
scholars. If Christ were to preach to us to-day, He 
would employ King James' version, with which the 
people are familiar, just as of old He did the Septuagint. 
Doubtless, if He found any important errors, He would 
correct them, but this would be the Bible He would 
use, and use it with all its inherent Divine authority. 
Just so whenever His ministers repeat from the pulpit a 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 57 

verse or passage of Scripture, they always quote from a 
translation, sometimes their own, sometimes that of a 
known scholar, generally from the version of King 
James. They quote it as the word of God, authorita- 
tive and binding. The conclusion of the whole matter 
is this : We have a literary, historic, moral and spir- 
itual demonstration that our Bible is the Word of God, 
and the Word of God is our Bible. This book is God's 
book, and in this conclusion we rest, we preach, we 
read, we labor, and send forth the Scriptures translated 
into every language, in the assured hope of the salvation 
of the world by means of them. 

Infidelity is at its wit's end. The Bible is too much 
for it. It is the household book of the world, the in- 
spiration of the best literature, and to it poetry, paint- 
ing, music, and eloquence delight to bring their honor 
and glory. Never man spake like Christ. Never book 
has spoken like the Bible. It is the Book of books, the 
God of books, and the book of God. — By Rev. Thomas 
H. Skinner, D. D., in the Homiletic Monthly. 



THE GREAT THEME OF THE BIBLE. 

One of the most characteristic and prominent features 
of the Bible, considered as a whole — that which runs 
through it from beginning to end, and which distin- 
guishes it at once from all other books, is, that it sub- 



158 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

ordinates everything to the idea of — God. It is not 
without reason called the Book of God ; and would be 
so, in a very intelligible sense, even if it were wholly false, 
or if there were no God at all. From the first sentence 
to the last He is the great theme of it, the Alpha and 
Omega. Infinitely various as are its contents, this is the 
keynote which runs through the whole. This, consid- 
ering that it is a book of fragments, written by many 
different authors in far distant ages, could hardly be ex- 
pected from human nature, whether monotheistic or not. 
It was not to be exoected from human nature, whether 
the appeal be made to the consciousness of individual 
man, or to the facts of the religious history of the world. 
God is here exhibited as exercising an all-pervading 
moral government over the universe — over the invisible 
thoughts as well as over the actions of men — and direct- 
ing the whole course of events to the manifestation of his 
glory and that which is inseparable from it (or, rather, 
which is identical with it), the felicity of His creatures 
as involved in the ultimate triumph of a purely moral 
and spiritual empire. Is man in such sympathy with 
such objects, judging from human consciousness or from 
history, as to make this uniform assertion of the para- 
mount claims of God other than a paradox ? 

We find this exclusive reference to God in the series 
of Biblical writers ; and it is not found elsewhere, not 
only not among other nations, but not even among the 
Jews themselves apart from their writers. The Jews, 
like the rest of the world, had little sympathy with such 
views, and the iteration of them from age to age in so 
long a succession of documents was no more than neces- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 159 

sary to preserve them from oblivion. The perpetual 
relapses of the children of Abraham into idolatry, and 
rebellion against the One God they confessed, show 
that this tone was no more natural to them than to the 
rest of the world. They were like the kine that bore 
back the ''Ark" from the land of the Philistines, and 
who went against their instincts and their inclinations up 
to Bethshemesh, "lowing as they went," after their 
calves that had been shut up at home. 

A peculiarity of this book, consequent on its thus 
subordinating everything, whether in the history of the 
Jews or of other nations, to this dominant idea of God, 
and the claims of His universal and spiritual govern- 
ment, deserves to be mentioned here. There is not 
only an unique, but (looking upon it as the work of men) 
an unnatural sublimity about it. The relative import- 
ance of events seems often inverted. The book passes 
by, or casually notices, most of the things which men 
regard as supremely momentous — the rise and fall of 
empires, the changes and revolutions which fill great 
nations with terror or triumph. These events, which 
fill the page of ordinary history, it leaves to be chron- 
icled in other books, or to drop into oblivion. Touching 
on an infinity of subjects, dealing with the minutest as 
well as most important facts, with the smallest details of 
private life, with the fortunes of vast communities , 
everything, great or little, is viewed in relation to the 
government of the Supreme Ruler, or rather is great or 
little only as it has a bearing on the development and 
issues of that invisible spiritual empire which He is in- 
tent on founding and rearing in the world. In all this 



160 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

there is something most strange, and, looking at what 
might be expected from man, unnatural. The way in 
which the Bible treats those themes of history which, in 
man's estimate, are of such infinite importance (at least, 
each generation that witnesses them, thinks so ; for 
though the ''ruins of empires " in a measure correct the 
illusion with respect to the remote past, they can not 
disenchant us of the like illusion in relation to our own 
time), is not indeed inhuman, unhuman. Of the great 
political changes which passed over the ancient world, 
the Bible is almost as silent and unconcerned as sun 
and stars when they look down upon the tumult and 
noise of man's battle-fields. We hear, as it were, the 
sound, but it is as the ocean on a distant shore. The 
intrigues of courts, the career and achievements of great 
conquerors, the thrilling events which marked the 
extinction or transfer of political power and civilization, 
the great battles which shook the world ; in a word, all 
those things over which the imagination of the ordinary 
historian lingers with such intense emotion, are touched 
only as they happen to traverse the religious history of 
the strange community whose destinies the Bible is trac- 
ing, or those ulterior designs of which this people were 
to be the unconscious instruments to the world. In 
brief, all is viewed in relation and subordination to the 
religious ideas which permeate the book. The fortunes 
of the nations which surrounded Judea, as well as those 
of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, are cursorily 
referred to just so far as this ; otherwise the Bible does 
not deign to notice them at all. Though the world 
might be ringing with the achievements of their great 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 161 

captains, and the ground shaking under the tread of 
their innumerable legions, the writers of this strange 
book are deaf to it all — all passes before them ' ' silent as a 
picture ; " or if the Bible condescends to give a tran- 
scient glance at such things (as it sometimes does, and 
often with touches of surpassing sublimity), it is still 
only within the limits above mentioned. As Butler 
says, "the common affairs of the world, and what is 
going on in it," are in the estimate of Scripture " a mere 
scene of distraction." — From The Superhuman Origin of' 
the Bible, by Henry Rogers : one of the best books in the 
English language. 



TREASURE IN HEAVEN. 

" Alas ! I am a poor man now. I had worked hard 
and amassed a good deal of money, but in an evil hour 
I trusted it to unprincipled men, and they have made 
away with my hard-earned savings. I must begin life 
again now, when I am no longer young. Alas ! Alas ! " 

Thus spoke Baboo Petamber Singh, a shop-keeper in 
a bazaar in Calcutta, to a customer who came into his 
shop. He had been well-known in the city for many 
years ; his shop contained things which ladies dearly 
love — silks, muslins, shawls, ribbons, finery of all kinds 
— and daily was it frequented by crowds. But in 



1 62 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

making haste to increase his riches he had lent out sev- 
eral thousands on heavy interest. The parties to whom 
he had lent his money had failed in business and be- 
come insolvent, and the consequence was that he had 
been involved in their ruin and had fallen with them. 
He had lost all, and now, when past middle age, was 
obliged to begin life afresh. The customer to whom 
he spoke was one who knew the "true riches," and 
therefore said quietly : 

" Why do you not lay up treasures in Heaven, where 
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves 
do not break through nor steal ? " 

God's words are mighty words ; they seemed at once 
to penetrate his soul, and he answered : — 

" True, true ; let me have a book that tells about the 
treasure that none can take away, " 

A Testament was given, accompanied by a prayer 
that the true riches might be sought and found by the 
poor disappointed man, and customer and shopkeeper 
parted. 

That night Petamber Singh, after balancing his ac- 
counts for the day, and eating his dinner, saddened by 
the thought of the luxuries he was now obliged to do 
without, sat down to look at the book left by his 
strange customer. The passage quoted had been 
marked down for him. He read it first. 

' ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, 
where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves 
break through and steal ; but lay up for yourselves 
treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth 
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 163 

steal: for- where your treasure is, there will your heart 
be also." 

What can these words mean ? he thought. Oh, how 
I wish I had laid up my money somewhere else, and 
then these swindlers would not have got hold of it. 
Just think how much I have lost, in one way or another. 
Only two months ago I bought some bales of silk, 
hoping to sell them to great advantage, but the mice 
got hold of them and bit large holes in them, and they 
have been a dead loss to me. Some years ago I bought 
a handsome cashmere shawl for 500 rupees, and 
thought it would be wealth to me all my life. Yesterday 
I took it out to wear at the Poojah and I found that the 
insects had eaten it in several places. Truly, these 
earthly treasures are easily corrupted by moth and rust, 
and stolen by thieves. What a good thing it would be 
if I could lay up treasures in Heaven ! Heaven ! is not 
that the dwelling-place of God ? — and if so, it must be 
a safe place. I shall read this book night after night, 
and try and find out what is meant by this. 

He opened the book at the beginning. He had 
heard something of Christ, for who now, in the cities of 
India, does not know something of the glorious Lord 
Jesus Christ, who came to give his life a ransom for 
many. He read of his wondrous birth, of the wise men 
who fell down and worshipped the young child, and 
opening their treasures presented to Him gifts — gold and 
frankincense, and myrrh. Was this the way in which 
they laid up treasures in Heaven ? he thought. Truly 
what they gave him could never be lost, stolen or injured. 

The reading went on night after night when the busi- 



164 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

ness of the day was over. Long did he ponder over 
the words which had first been repeated to him ; indeed 
he committed them to memory. ' ' Where your treas- 
ure is, there your heart will be also." True, he 
thought, all these years my heart has been in my shop, 
in my money-chest, in my clothes-box, but it must be 
surely a more blessed thing to have my thoughts in 
Heaven. 

The parables of the hidden treasures, and the pearl of 
great price, in Matthew xiii, exercised a strong influence 
over him. I should have acted like those men, he 
thought. Just think what it would be to find a treas- 
ure in the courtyard of the house I live in. Were I to 
find such a thing, I would sell everything I now possess, 
little as it is in comparison with what I have lost, and 
I would buy the house, and how rich I should be then ! 
And if I saw a pearl of great price in the hands of any 
dealer in precious stones, how gladly I would buy it at 
the cost of all that belongs to me ! A parable is a story 
with a -meaning. What is the meaning of these para- 
bles? Is there a treasure I can possess by giving 
up all ? 

The story of the rich young man, in Matthew xix, 
made a deep impression on his mind. Is this the ex- 
planation of laying up treasure in Heaven ? — Jesus told 
the rich young man to sell all that he had, and give to 
the poor, and he would have treasure in Heaven. Now 
that I have lost so much, I feel willing to learn by ex- 
perience and to try to lay up treasures in Heaven if I can 
only find out how. The 29th verse speaks of forsaking 
everything, houses, lands, family, for the sake of Christ, 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 165 

and inheriting " everlasting life." What a glorious 
thing that everlasting life must be ! Would that I had 
this treasure ! 

The parable of the rich fool, in Luke xii, made him 
feel much. I have been such a fool, he thought. I 
laid up treasures for myself and was not rich 
toward God. My soul might have been required, long 
ere this, as the soul of that rich man was. What would 
have become of me ? 

He thus went on reading in order, yet occasionally 
glancing at other places. One day God the Spirit 
directed him to James v. "Go to now, ye rich men; 
weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon 
you. 'Your riches are currupted, and your garments 
are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and 
the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and 
shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped 
treasure together for the last days. Behold the hire of 
the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which 
is of you kept back by fraud, crieth ; and the cries of 
them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the 
Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the 
earth, and been wanton, ye have nourished your hearts 
as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and 
killed the just; and he doth not resist you. Be 
patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the 
Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious 
fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he 
receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient ; 
stablish your hearts ; for the coming of the Lord 
draweth nigh." 



1 66 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

Very bitter were his feelings, on reading these words. 
I have oppressed the poor who worked for me. I have 
often kept back their wages unnecessarily, glad of the 
slightest excuse to withhold even an anna. What must 
God think of me ? I am a sinner. I see now how I 
have sinned ; I have been unjust ; I have demanded. 
I have been no better than the rogues who have swin- 
dled me out of my money. I remember Baboo Ram 
Kristo, to whom I lent one hundred rupees at exhorbi- 
tant interest. Poor man ! I got from him, in the way of 
interest and compound interest, four hundred rupees, 
and yet when he died I compelled his miserable children 
to sell the few valuables they possessed to pay me back 
the principal. How they entreated me to let them off ! 
but I would not do it. What a wretch I have been ! 
And there was that poor tailor, who executed a large 
order for me, and I kept back from paying him until I 
received the money myself, and then when it came he 
was dead, and since his family had nothing to show that 
I owed the money, I took advantage of it to refuse pay- 
ment. His family must have cursed me. Richly did I 
deserve their curses. Alas ! Alas ! I am a sinner. 
This book says, "the coming of the Lord draweth 
nigh." How shall I stand before the Lord when He 
comes to judgment ? 

From this time his lamentations over his lost riches 
ceased. One only desire took possession of his heart, 
the desire of obtaining salvation. This must be the 
" true riches," he thought. 

The New Testament was pursued again, with this ob- 
ject in view. " Thou shalt call His name Jesus ; for He 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 167 

shall save His people from their sins. " This verse struck 
his heart on beginning again. This is the salvation I 
want. I want to be saved from all my sins. Christ is 
the only Saviour I ever heard of. The Krishna we talk 
of so much could not save himself from sin, how then 
can he save me ? But the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom 
I read in this book, never committed any sin. He could 
save Himself, therefore He can save me. I wonder how 
He can save me ! I wish I knew. 

He read on, and day by day the light brightened. 
Chapters he had read at first, dimly seeing their meaning, 
now became very bright to him. " Believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved," Acts 10:31, led 
him to think. ' ' Lord, I ao believe. I believe that 
Thou art the only Saviour. Thou alone canst save me. 
I cannot save myself. I put my soul into Thy hands. 
Save me for Thine own name's sake. Amen." And 
Jesus heard and saved. 

Petamber Singh went on with his business as usual, 
but now there was no more taking advantage of others, 
no more demanding more than was right. He asked a 
fair price for his goods. He gave the right measure, not 
swerving aside from the right line, even by the breadth 
of a nail. Those who worked for him received their full 
wages and regularly. The neighboring shop-keepers won- 
dered, saying one to another, "What has come over 
the man ? He used to be a regular screw, one with whom 
it was very hard to deal. But now he is different." 
' ' What do you think I heard yesterday ? Rajgopal 
Baboo was employed as account-keeper by Petamber 
Baboo. «He was very ill for about a month and his 



1 68 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

family were in great distress, wondering how they were 
to live. As soon as he was able he went to the shop, 
expecting to be told that he was no longer needed. 
Petamber Baboo, however, received him very kindly, 
and heard all his story, and, to his surprise, gave him 
his month's salary and told him to come again as before. 
He said he had been obliged to employ some one to act 
for him, but that God had prospered him and that he 
was glad to be able to pay him his salary. Was not 
this astonishing ? Somebody asked him why he acted in 
this way? He said he had read a rule to this effect: 
' Whatever ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
even so to them.' I believe this rule is in the Bible." 
" Well, do you know that if is whispered that Petamber 
Singh has become a Christian?" "So I have heard. 
What makes people think so?" " He keeps a copy of 
the Bible in the house, and he has been seen reading it 
and explaining it to others." 

A few days after this there was a fresh commotion. 
One Sabbath morning no one came to open Petamber's 
shop. The other shop-keepers wondered, and the next 
day several went up to him and said, " What were you 
doing yesterday ? The bazaar was full of people and 
they were wondering why your shop was closed." " I 
suppose you wish for a holiday every week." " A holi- 
day is pleasant, but my true reason is that the Bible 
commands it, and I think it right to obey the commands 
of God." "What, are you turning a Christian?" 
• ' If by a Christian you mean a follower of Christ, you 
are right. I wish, indeed, to follow the Lord Jesus 
Christ." "How can you forsake the religion of your 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 169 

fathers ? " "If their religion could not save them, why 
should I adhere to it?" 

He found it rather hard work at first to follow Christ. 
His neighbors made fun of him, the shop-keepers in the 
bazaar made fun of him, and tried to prevent customers 
from going to his shop. The hardest trial of all was the 
anger of his own family. His wife wept for several days 
and would not speak to him. His children reproached 
him. But he kept right on, doing what was rignt, and 
when reviled not answering again. All that was said 
against him was said falsely, and therefore the words 
lacked a sting. 

One day, while reading in Hebrews, he came upon 
these words in the eleventh chapter : " By faith Moses, 
when he was come to years, refused to be called the son 
of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer afflic- 
tion with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures 
of sin for a season ; esteeming the reproach of Christ 
greater riches than the treasures of Egypt ; for he had 
respect unto the recompense of the reward." 

He had before this obtained a copy of the Old Testa- 
ment, and knew the history of Moses. The verses 
touched an old chord. He thought of the contrast be- 
tween affliction with the people of God and the pleasures 
of sin, between the reproach of Christ and the pleasures 
of Egypt. He then deliberately resolved to cast in his 
lot with the people of God. ' ' They have reproached 
me already, and their reproaches, though they have 
grieved me, have not hurt me. I am now surely rich. 
Christ is now my Saviour. In Him I have all I want. 
In Him I have pardon, and peace, and endless life. 

12 



1 70 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

What more can I want ? Christ is my treasure. He is 
in Heaven and my heart is there also, and how I rejoice ! 
This treasure no one will be able to take away. I may 
lose all, but I can never lose Christ. Most gladly will 
I avow myself as His disciple by being baptized in His 
name." 

He was baptized publicly, and many of his friends 
witnessed the solemn act of consecration. He lived on 
among them as usual. For a time there was-much bit- 
terness, much opposition, but all this gradually ceased. 
He prospered in his business and did well. One thing 
was remarkable : His prosperity commenced from the 
time that he resolved to devote one-tenth of his income 
to the service of God. His family yielded to his wishes 
and became a Christian household. At first they did 
this only to please him, but soon the "light" which 
always follows the " entrance" of God's words led 
them to serve God with Other motives. They too laid 
up their treasures in Heaven. 

God grant that all who read this little story may, like 
Petamber Baboo, find Christ as their Saviour, and so be 
rich to all eternity ! Amen. — By Mary E. Leslie, in the 
Luc know Witness. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 7 1 



GOD'S EPISTLE. 

Lovers are mightily pleased when they hearany thing 
of the party beloved, or receive anything from them — a 
letter or a token. The Word is God's epistle and love- 
letter to ourselves ; it is the more welcome for his sake. 
The contrary, God complaineth of: "I have written to 
them the great things of my law, but they were counted 
as a strange thing," Hos. 8 : 13. God is the author, 
whosoever be the penman ; it is a writing from Him to 
us. Now to be strangers to it, or little conversant 
about it, argueth some contempt of God : as to slight 
the letter of a friend, showeth little esteem of the writer. 
But now the saints put it into their bosoms, view it with 
delight — it is God's epistle. It is their direction, their 
support, their charter. 

1. It is their direction. ■ " It is alight that shineth in a 
dark place." 2 Peter 1 : 19. The world is a dark place 
beset with dangers, and ever and anon we are apt to 
stumble into the pit of destruction, without taking heed 
to this light. The Word discovereth to them evils, that 
they may see them, repent of them, forsake them ; and 
showeth us our ready way to Heaven, that we may 
walk therein. It discovereth the greatest dangers, and 
pointeth out the surest way to safety and peace. They 
are called "true laws," and "good statutes," to show 
the full proportion that they bear to the soul. Venwi 
and bonum } truth and goodness, are proper for our most 
eminent faculties, the understanding and will. It doth 



172 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

a man's heart good, to study these statutes. A child of 
God that seeth others stumble and fall, how may he 
stand and bless God for the direction of the Word, that 
God hath given him counsel in his reins, that he hath a 
clue to lead him out of those labyrinths in which others 
have lost their way, and know not how to escape ! 

2. It is their support. It is God's shop, whence they 
fetch all their cordials in a time of fainting, and so are 
freed from those fears and discontents and despairing 
thoughts, under which others languish; "This is my 
comfort in my affliction, Thy Word hath quickened me." 
When a believer is damped with trouble, and even dead 
at heart, a promise will revive him again ; " Unless Thy 
law had been my delights, I should then have perished 
in mine, affliction." Psalm 119:92. And many such 
like experiences the saints have had. The worth of the 
Word is best known in an evil time. One promise in 
the Word of God doth bear up the heart more than all 
the arguings and discourses of men, though never so 
excellent. In a time of temptation, in the hour of 
death, O what a reviving is one Word of God's mouth! 

3. It is their charter, that which they have to show 
for their everlasting hopes. There we have promises of 
eternal joy and blessedness under the greatest assur- 
ance; and this makes way for strong consolation. A 
man that hath a clear evidence to show for a fair inherit- 
ance, it is not irksome to hear it read, or to look over it 
now and then, 'as a covetous man is pleased to look into 
his bills and bonds which he has under hand and seal. 
" I will delight myself in thy statutes." — Thomas Man- 
ton, D. D. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 173 



THE BIBLE CONTRASTED WITH OTHER 
SACRED BOOKS. 

To feel forcibly the ■ divinity of the Bible it is only 
necessary to read other sacred books extant among men 
—or at the least translations of them. The chief and 
best of all such is Mohammed's Koran. This is indeed 
in some respects a wonderful work ; in parts so awful 
and authoritative — of speech so passionless and stern — 
as articulate thunder from out of a clear sky ; arousing 
as a trumpet-call, hurried as a battle-cry ; grandly des- 
potic. But though fragments of it be so noble, yet as a 
whole how inferior is it to any preceptive or prophetic 
portion of even the Hebrew Scriptures. For the most 
part a series of contemporaneous utterances, at once 
frivolous and monotonous ; with no shape or sequence, 
no method or coherence. A book either of edicts and 
general orders, or of mere visions and rhapsodies ; en- 
couraging no investigation, precluding all discussion ; 
so strict in commandment, so poor in principle ; with no 
historical element in it, and no accommodative progres- 
sion ; of burning words indeed some times, but cold at 
the heart ; without any largeness of sympathy, of pity, 
or of love. The Shasters and Vedas of the East — how 
cumbersome and how childish ; with their tedious tradi- 
tions and endless fables without morals ; false in philoso- 
phy and yet not true in sentiment; dreamy, languid, 
and inane ; affording no ground of faith, and inspiring 
no hope of progress. The most venerable books of the 



174 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

Chinese — not sacred but emphatically secular — maxims 
of prudence and of order, and not laws of duty or of 
love — neither Divine nor human, only conventional — no 
soul of man that feels itself immortal could feed itself on 
these. The Egyptian sacred sculptures indeed, could 
we read them better, might exhibit to us truer things 
than these, but all their wisdom would assuredly be 
found but a small part of that which cames to us through 
Moses ; while when we turn to the most mature products 
of those classic nations who possessed no sacred writ- 
ings, but who strove to work out the great problems of 
human destiny for themselves, and so doing have indeed 
risen to a stature which, measured by any merely 
earthly standard, is the highest known among the races 
of mankind, we cannot but be impressed with the moral 
superiority of the very earliest elements of the revela- 
tions of the Bible over the maturest productions of their 
most speculative minds. 

However much the Christian Scriptures may have 
taught us to consider but as elementary some of the rep- 
resentations of the Hebrew Scriptures, yet it is only in 
comparison with these that for one moment they can 
seem inferior to any writings extant among men. Con- 
sidered in comparison with all the other literature and 
philosophy existing in the world which ever assumed to 
embody or exhibit a revelation of truth and duty for 
man, they are so superior as to be generically different. 
They are emphatically Holy Scriptures as well as sacred. 

For in no other writings is the infinite difference be- 
tween right and wrong, good and evil, so invariably 
asserted and so inflexibly upheld. Such uniform and 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 175 

clear declaration of the unity of God and of his claims on 
the hearts of his creatures — such mingled manifestations 
of His goodness and severity — as at once the Law-giver 
and the Father — showing mercy to the transgressor, 
and yet vindicating always the majesty of law — where 
elsewhere shall we find the like? And such revelations 
of humanity too ; such inculcation of man's present un- 
worthiness and weakness, and misery, and yet such 
assertion of his original dignity and potential worth ; 
such cultivation of the conscience ; such exhibition of 
prayer and obedience, of penitence and faith and love, 
as means of grace ; these things, and such as these, 
mark off even the older volume of our Scriptures from 
all the writings of heathenism by a distance we can not 
measure. 

With whatever elements of human imperfection some 
portions of them may have been permitted to be associa- 
ted, yet no one can honestly read any of those parts of 
the Hebrew writings which make claim to be direct 
revelation, without feeling that there is that in them 
which rebukes sin and exhorts to holiness — which rec- 
ognizes in man high responsibilities, and everywhere 
impresses the omnipresent providence of God. And 
those imperfections and inferiorities of historic detail, 
what are they but the links and threads which bind on 
the actual to the ideal — which form that only junction of 
the Divine and the human which can convey the light 
and life of the one so as to be received by the other in- 
fluentially, but without shock or injury ? What won- 
derful communion have we thus not only with what is 
altogether above us, but also with spirit through the 



176 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

flesh. The Scriptures are indeed often as the opening 
of the Heavens, calling us to listen to Words the like of 
which never have arisen, or could have arisen, from the 
earth ; but even here though the message is Divine, the 
voice which speaks it and the language spoken are ever 
as the speech of man, and the mind that has to receive it 
needs not to be unclothed but only clothed upon. 

Thus is the Bible, while a revelation of the Divine, 
ever full of human interest and human sympathy — of 
love and light and life ; no unimpassioned, cold, clear, 
philosophy or morality ; no system, no code ; neither 
only truths delivered as oracles, nor mere command- 
ments written on tables of stone, but a history as well as 
a revelation ; a religion written on the fleshly tablets of 
man's heart, to be learnt with reverence and to be 
obeyed by love. From the first page of it to the last it 
preserves this same gracious mode of teaching us — un- 
folding gradually the same great scheme by means of 
the greatest variety of operations — presenting us with 
all kinds of character and scenery, all sorts and condi- 
tions of men ; sublime yet practical ; rousing dormant 
energies, sowing truths ; its doctrines distilling as dew, 
its pleadings penetrating like light ; ever connecting 
earth with Heaven, as it were by ascending and de- 
scending angels, and binding up the revelations of man's 
highest destinies and duties with the most truthful 
records of his sufferings and his sins. True it is that it 
is not a complete history of mankind, but principally of 
one people only ; and unquestionably there are consid- 
erable developments of human nature which are not 
treated of by it at all ; but still the Bible is a book which 



Gleanings f 07- Bible Readers, 177 

treats of most things visible as well as of so many 
things invisible ; a book which registers the first crea- 
tion of the world as well as predicts its last day ; a book 
which in its earliest pages, written it may be a thousand 
years before those of any book now existing in the 
world, contains almost the whole authentic history that 
we have of the infancy of our race ; and which in its 
course of narrative, though it be chiefly concerned with 
the history of the Hebrews, brings before us specimens 
of almost every variety of man and every type of char- 
acter, from the East and from the West — making us 
citizens of this world in our training for a higher citizen- 
ship above. Thus mingling human sympathies with 
Divine instructions, and linking on the unknown to the 
known — the Bible of God is as full of grace as it is of 
truth, and speaks to us the very Messiah himself, with 
a self-evidencing Divinity, because speaking as man 
never spake. 

But amidst all this variety, what unity of spirit and of 
aim is there in the Bible ; the representations of God 
though continually progressive, yet always so in the 
same direction of holiness and love ; and the history of 
man, though always exhibiting him sinful, yet never as 
hopelessly degraded. A revelation spreading itself over 
fifteen centuries, and uniformly growing and brighten- 
ing — gradually lessening its own shadows, and at last 
changing itself into perfect day — herein lies a testimony 
as to whence it came which it is impossible to gainsay. 
And though written by nearly fifty writers of every 
order and condition — kings and shepherds, warriors, 
and fishermen, priests and publicans — separated from 



178 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

each other by intervals of long centuries — we recognize 
the same characteristic tone throughout ; uniformly leav- 
ing on the mind an impression of the holiness of God 
and of the capacity of humanity — which to this day the 
most enlightened feel it a task intellectually to master, 
and an impossibility practically to surpass. 

And more than this ; In all Scripture there is a centre ; 
there is a transcendant object which all its prophecy pre- 
dicts and all its history tends to introduce. All the 
events and personages — the patriarchs, the Law and the 
prophets, and the apostles — are but as the circumference 
of this, and derive all their glory from it as the planets 
from the solar fire. And he who thus stands where all 
the converging lines of Scripture meet is the Messiah of 
humanity as well as of the Jews — the Son of God and the 
Son of Man. Thus the Bible vindicates itself as the law 
and the gospel of our race — as the earliest and the last 
communication from Heaven — as all that ever has been, 
or ever shall be, supernaturally written for our learning 
— as at once the final revelation of God and the whole 
duty of man. — By Fredrick Myers. 



STORY OF A JEWISH MAIDEN. 

She was the only child of respectable parents residing 
in one of the rural districts of the kingdom of Poland, 
and was brought up with great care and tenderness. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. ijg 

Even when yet quite a child, she was of a reserved and 
pensive disposition. She rarely joined other children in 
their lively sports, and would rather sit by herself, full of 
quiet thought. She never had any intercourse with 
Christian children, nor did she show any desire to be- 
come acquainted with such. Thus her life sped away in 
undisturbed quietude until she attained her sixteenth 
year. About that time she was one day sitting by her- 
self in her father's garden, which was separated only by 
a wooden fence from the garden of her. Christian neigh- 
bor's. Several girls were^playing on the other side of 
the fence ; but of this the Jewish maiden took no heed, 
until a cheerful shout startled her. A young friend rushed 
up to the merry group, crying, ' ' Look here, is not this 
a pretty book ? My father has just bought it for me." 
A short pause ensued whilst the new acquisition was 
being examined, and then one of the girls exclaimed : 
" Oh, I know that ! that is the New Testament ; I will 
read a piece to you." 

The portion chosen was the nineteenth chapter of St. 
John. This thoroughly aroused and deeply interested 
the Jewish maiden. The words, never heard before, 
sunk deep into her heart. She also well remembered 
that the book had been called the New Testament, and 
she determined to get possession of a copy. This was 
not very difficult. She then commenced a regular course 
of reading, and very soon she felt so attracted by the 
Saviour, full of love and compassion, of Whom every 
page spake, that she determined to acknowledge Him to 
be her Master. She unbosomed her thoughts to her 
parents, and entreated them to read the New Testament 



180 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

for themselves and adopt the Christian faith. The par- 
ents were struck dumb with surprise. ' Was this their 
own daughter, once so timid and simple, and now plead- 
ing with such fervency the cause of the God of the Chris- 
tians ? Was this possible? And how had the girl ac- 
quired these notions, all intercourse with Christians 
having been studiously avoided ? Their amazement was 
equal only to their indignation. They forbade the girl 
ever again to speak on this subject, and threatened her 
with their extreme displeasure, yea, with a curse, if she 
ever dared to think of becoming a Christian. The poor 
girl turned away in silent sorrow, but in her little closet 
she would still read her precious book and never tire. 

A year later the mother had to leave home on press- 
ing family business, and she was detained beyond ex- 
pectation. Before she returned the father was seized 
with a violent disease. The devoted girl sat day and 
night by her father's side, not only nursing his sick 
body, but also speaking to him lovingly and pursuasively 
of Him whom her soul adored. Her little Testament in 
hand, she proved to him that Jesus was the Messiah 
who had suffered and died for sinners, and with her eyes 
full of tears she exclaimed : ' ' Behold father, accept Him 
as thy Saviour. Say that He is thy Redeemer ; and if 
thou shouldst then be called away, we shall meet again 
in the glorious place where He resides." 

At length the eyes of the dying Jew were opened. 
He beheld the Lamb of God bearing the sins of the 
world ; he called upon His name and found peace. The 
dear Hebrew maiden had the unspeakable happiness to 
hear her father utter the wish, before he departed, pub- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 8 1 

licly to confess himself the disciple of Jesus and to be 
baptized in His name. Thinking of nothing but his 
salvation and her happiness, the girl hastened off to a 
Christian minister, residing at some little distance. To 
the latter all this was as new as unexpected. He 
listened complacently, but objected to doing things so 
hurriedly. Besides, he observed, the Jewish commu- 
nity was large and influential in the place ; the thing 
would not be tolerated ; he would never get admittance 
to the dying man's bed. In the course of the conversa- 
tion the minister quoted the dying words of the Re- 
deemer, with which he had instituted the ordinance of 
baptism, and for the present he dismissed the girl, 
saying, ' ' Go and pray for thy dear father ; repeat to him 
the words thou hast heard from me, and may the God 
of all all grace except him as His child ! " The girl did 
as she was bid, and, not very long after, her father died 
in peace, freely confessing that he trusted entirely in 
the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, although it was 
not until the twelfth hour that he learned to know His 
name. 

Anxious cares had still kept the mother at a distance. 
She returned not until after her husband's death, uncon- 
scious of the solemn events that had taken place in the 
mind of the departed one. When the news broke upon 
her that he had died a Christian, she was thunderstruck. 
Her fury knew no bounds. She and the Jews that as- 
sembled around her, stirring up the wild fire of fanati- 
cism, fell upon the poor, helpless child, and so ill-treated 
her that she sank and fainted. But, in the midst of 
much bitter persecution, she continued steadfast and 



/ 



1 82 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

faithful to the truth contained in her New Testament. 
All at once the maiden disappeared. She had been sent 
to distant relatives, the mother said, to be cured of her 
foolish obstinacy. Six weeks later, however, the girl 
turned up in the public streets — but in what a state ! 
Her clothes torn and filthy, her hair hanging down wildly 
over face and shoulders, her hands and feet bleeding, 
she ran through the streets crying for help. A crowd 
soon gathered. The poor girl said she had been locked 
up in a cellar all the time, and her mother having now, 
in a frenzy of passion, threatened to murder her, she 
had, after a fearful struggle, succeeded in making her 
escape. The police now interfered and shielded her 
from further assault. She "was escorted to Warsaw, and, 
after a course of instruction, made a public profession of 
Christ. May peace and grace be multiplied unto her! — 
Monthly Reporter. 



THE BIBLE IS A MARVELOUS BOOK. 

The Bible is a book of life, written for the instruction 
and edification of all ages and nations. No man who 
has felt its Divine beauty and power, would exchange 
this volume for all the literature of the world. Eternity 
alone can unfold the extent of its influence for good. 
The Bible, like the person and work of our Saviour, is 
theanthropic in its character and aim. The eternal per- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 183 

sonal work of God "was made flesh," and the whole 
fullness of the Godhead and sinless manhood were 
united in one person forever. So the spoken word of 
God may be said to have become flesh in the Bible. 
It is therefore all Divine, and yet all human, from be- 
ginning to end. Through the veil of the letter we 
behold the glory of the eternal truth of God. The 
Divine and human in the Bible sustain a similar relation 
to each other, as in the Person of Christ : they are un- 
mixed, yet inseparably united, and constitute but one 
life, which kindles life in the heart of the believer. 

Viewed merely as a human or literary production, 
the Bible is a marvelous book, and without a rival. All 
the libraries of theology, philosophy, history, antiqui- 
ties, poetry, law, and polity, would not furnish material 
enough for so rich a treasure of the choicest gems of 
human genius, wisdom and experience. It embraces 
works of about forty authors, representing the extremes 
of society, from the throne of the king to the boat of 
the fisherman ; it was written during a long period of 
sixteen centuries, on the banks of the Nile, in the 
desert of Arabia, in the land of promise, in Asia Minor, 
in classical Greece, and imperial Rome ; it commences 
with the creation, and ends with the final glorification, 
after describing all the intervening stages in the revela- 
tion of God and the spiritual development of man ; it 
uses all forms of literary composition ; ' it rises to the 
highest heights, and descends to the lowest depths of 
humanity ; it measures all states and conditions of life ; 
it is acquainted with every grief and every woe ; it 
touches every chord of sympathy ; it contains the spir- 



x 84 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

itual biography of every heart ; it is suited to every 
class of society, and can be read with the same interest 
and profit by the King and the beggar, by the philos- 
opher and the child ; it is as universal as the race, and 
reaches beyond the limits of time into the boundless 
region of eternity. Even the matchless combination of 
human excellencies points to its Divine character and 
origin, as the absolute perfection of Christ's humanity 
is all evidence of his Divinity. 

The Bible is first and last a book of religion. It pre- 
sents the only true, universal, and absolute religion of 
God, both in its preparatory process of growth under 
the dispensation of the law and the promise, and in its 
completion under the dispensation of the gospel — a re- 
ligion which is intended ultimately to absorb all the 
other religions of the world. It speaks to us as immor- 
tal beings on the highest, noblest and most important 
themes which can challenge our attention, and with an 
authority which is absolutely irresistible and overwhelm- 
ing. It can instruct, edify, warn, terrify, appease, cheer, 
and encourage, as no other book. It siezes a man in 
the hidden depths of his intellectual and moral con- 
stitution, and goes to the quick of the soul, to that 
mysterious point where it is connected with the unseen 
world and with the Great Father of spirits. It acts 
like an all-penetrating and all-transforming leaven upon 
every faculty of the mind, and every emotion of the 
heart. It enriches the memory ; it elevates the reason ; 
it enlivens the imagination; it directs the judgment; 
it moves the affections ; it controls the passions ; it 
quickens the conscience ; it strengthens the will ; it 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 185 

kindles the sacred flame of faith, hope, and charity ; 
it purifies, ennobles, sanctifies the whole man, and brings 
him into living union with God. It can not only en- 
lighten, reform, and improve, but regenerate and create 
anew, and produce effects which lie far beyond the 
power of human genius. It has light for the blind, 
strength for the weak, food for the hungry, drink for 
the thirsty ; it has a counsel in precept or example for 
every relation in life, a comfort for every sorrow, a 
balm for every wound. . 

Of all the books in the world, the Bible is the only 
one of which we never tire, but which we admire and 
love more and more in proportion as we use it. Like 
the diamond, it casts its lusture in every direction ; like 
a torch, the more it is shaken the more it shines ; like 
a healing herb, the harder it is pressed, the sweeter is 
its fragrance. — Dr. Schaff. 



ATTRACTIONS OF THE BIBLE. 

In giving the Bible, God had regard to the mind of 
man. He knew that man has more curiosity than piety, 
more taste than sanctity, and that persons are more 
anxious to hear some new thing, or read some beau- 
teous theme, than to read or hear about God and His 
great salvation ; that few could ever ask, ' ' What must 
I do to be saved ? " till they had once been attracted and 

'3 » 



1 86 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

brought to the Bible itself. And therefore He made 
the Bible not only an instructive book but an attractive 
one — not only true, but enticing — a book which in try- 
ing to catch the heart of man, should gratify his taste. 
The pearl is of great price, but even the casket is of 
exquisite beauty ; the world's Maker is the Bible's 
Author, and the same profusion which furnished so 
lavishly the abode of man, has filled thus richly, and 
adorned thus brilliantly, the book of man. For God 
has made inspiration a counterpart of the incarnation ; 
and just as in the incarnate mystery, without mutual en- 
croachments, and without confusion, we have very God 
and very man, so in Scripture we have a book, every 
sentence of which is truly human, and yet every sen- 
tence of which is truly Divine. Holy men spake and 
wrote it "as they were moved by the Holy Ghost;" 
and just as when God sent his Son into the world, He 
sent Him not in the fashion of an angel, nor even in the 
fashion of a glorified and celestial man, but sent Him 
"in all points like unto His brethren," so when He 
sent into the world His written Word, it came not 
ready-written with an angel's plume, but with reed from 
the Jordan, and was consigned to paper from the 
marshy Nile, and every word of it not the less heavenly. 
We have in God's revelation the beautiful simplicity of 
John, the argumentative soul-stirring energy of Paul, 
the fervent solemnity of Peter, the lyrical mood of 
David, the ingenious and majestic narrative of Moses, 
the royal wisdom of Solomon ; but we have also God. 
And such ought to be the word of Jehovah, like im- 
manuel, full of grace and truth, at once in the bosom of 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 187 

God and in the heart of man — powerful, yet sympa- 
thizing — celestial, yet human — exalted, yet humbling — 
imposing, yet familiar — God and man. Oh, my breth- 
ren, there is a loveliness even in the letter of the Bible, 
but there is life for souls in the Divine significance. In 
blissful bewilderment may you forget the fascinations of 
earth and and the pleasures of sin, and only wake up to 
consciousness still to find yourself alone with the Master ; 
and none will less grieve than he who now addresses 
you, if the literary attractions of the Bible become thus 
merged and surperseded in charms more spiritual — in 
those attractions, which if they draw you to the Bible, 
will also draw you at last to Heaven. — -James Hamilton. 



A BOY WHO LOVED HIS BIBLE. 

Johnny Davies, when only nine years of age, the son 
of a poor widow, came to my house (I am a Bible secre- 
tary) at ten o'clock on an extremely cold winter night, 
and, on finding my shop closed, came to the kitchen 
door and loudly rapped several times. We had already 
commenced reading before family prayer, and for that 
reason I forbade the servant to answer the door ; but 
such was the perseverance of the boy, that we at last 
yielded to his importunity, and when the servant in- 
quired what was wanting, the reply was, " A Bible." I 
answered, " If you come in the morning, you can have 



1 88 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

one." " I can not sir," continued the boy, " as I work 
in M." (a place two miles distant), "and don't return 
home until late at night." " Come in, then, and you 
shall have one; " and on inquiring how he came into 
possession of the money he gave me for the Bible, and 
how he thought of spending it for so good a book, he 
told me that it had been announced in the Sunday 
school that any little boy or girl could have a Bible very 
cheap at my house. "Therefore I saved it, sir," con- 
tinued the boy. I replied, Ci You did very right in 
buying one for yourself; " and wished him good-night. 
The next day his widowed mother came with the 
Bible in her hand. I was for a moment startled, fearing 
the boy had done something wrong : and her first word 
was, ' ' Did my little boy buy this Bible here last 
night"? " " He did ; and told me that he had saved the 
money for that purpose." "Yes," continued the 
mother, " and how do you think he saved it ? " "lean 
not say." "Well, I will tell you. Having to leave 
home very early every morning before breakfast, I cut 
him two large pieces of dark bread (for I can not get 
anything better) one for his breakfast and the other for 
his dinner; his supper he had when he came home at 
night ; and with this I gave him half-penny each day to 
buy some milk, and told him to divide it into two equal 
parts, the one for his breakfast and the other for his din- 
ner. " Here was a pause, and from her countenance the 
strong emotions of her soul were evident ; in vain she 
tried to repress the feelings of a widowed mother over 
her child. To use her own language, "The little boy 
ate the dark bread and drank nothing but water for four 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 189 

successive weeks, without her knowledge, to have this 
Bible," holding it still up in her hand. Such was the 
value set upon the Word of God by this poor little boy ! 
— Bible Society Record. 



DIRECTIONS FOR READING THE BIBLE. 

1. In all your reading of the Bible, bear in mind that 
it is the Word of God. 

2. Pray for Divine aid and illumination. 
3.. Read with patience and self-denial. 

4. Read with unbroken attention. 

5. Endeavor to learn something new from every 
verse before you leave it. 

6. Exercise faith on all you read. 

7. Read with a willing and obedient mind. 

8. Let all that you read be applied to yourself in the 
way of self-examination. 

9. Seek to have your affections stirred up while you 
read. 

10. Set apart a special time for devotional reading. 

11. Keep the Lord Jesus in view, in all that you read. 

12. Read the Bible more than anything else. 

13. Read the Bible daily. 

14. Read in regular course. 

15. Neglect no part of Scripture. 



190 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

16. Let your daily portion be of proper length — 
neither too much nor too little. 

17. Read for yourself, impartially and without pre- 
judice. 

18. In every passage, try to have before your mind 
the whole scene and all the circumstances. 

19. Compare passage with passage. 

20. Pay special attention to the connection and scope 
of every passage. 

21. Make a judicious use of commentaries. 

22. Read the text abundantly. 

23. Remember that this book is to be the study of 
your life. 

24. Cherish ardent love for the Scriptures. 

25. Charge your memory with all that you read. 

26. Commit to memory some portion of Scripture 
every day. 

27. Examine yourself on what you have read. 

28. Make what you have read the subject of medita- 
tion. 

29. Frequently converse about what you have been 
reading. 

30. Turn what you read into prayer. 

31. In all your reading, remember that it is for the 
salvation of your soul. — Rev. James W. Alexander, D. D. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 19 1 



THE STYLE OF THE BIBLE. 

By the style of any writing, we understand both the 
propriety of the words, with their grammatical construc- 
tion, and that composition of the whole which renders it 
fit, decorous, elegant, and every way meet to be used in 
the matter about which it is used, and for the effecting 
of the end which is proposed in it. I know, some hold, 
atheistical spirits have despised the style of the holy 
writers, as simple and barbarous. Among these, 
Angelus Politianus is generally and deservedly censured 
by all learned men ; who was imitated in his profane 
contempt of it by Domitius Galderinus. And of the 
like temper was Petrus Bembus, who would scarce 
touch the Scripture ; while his own epistles are not one 
of them free from solecisims in grammar. Austin also 
confesseth that while he was a Manichee he had the 
same thoughts of it : " The Scripture seemed to me un- 
worthy to be compared with the excellency of Cicero.' ' 
But it must be acknowledged that these spake of the 
common translations of it; though they used that pretence 
to reject the study of the books themselves. 

I do confess that though some translations may and 
do render the words of the original more properly, and 
better represent and insinuate the native genius, beauty, 
life, and power, of the sacred style, than some others 
do, yet none of them can or do express the whole ex- 
cellency, elegancy, and marvelous efficacy of it, for the 
conveyance of its sense to the understandings and minds 
of men. Neither is this any reflection upon the trans- 



I9 2 Gleani?igs for Bible Readers. 

lators, their abilities, diligence, or faithfulness, but that 
which the nature of the thing itself produceth. There 
is in the sacred Scripture, in the words wherein by the 
Holy Ghost it was given out, a proper, peculiar virtue 
and secret efficacy, inflaming the minds of the readers 
and hearers, which no diligence or wisdom of man can 
fully and absolutely transfer into and impress upon any 
other language. And those who have designed to do it 
by substituting the wordy elegancies of another tongue, 
to express the quickening affecting idiotisms of them 
(which was the design of Castalio), have of all others, 
most failed in their intention. 

Neither doth this defect in translations arise from 
hence, that the original tongues may be more copious 
and emphatical than those of the translations — which 
possibly may be the condition of the Greek and Latin, 
as Jerome often complains — but it is from the cause be- 
fore named ; and therefore it is most evident in the 
translations of the Old Testament, when yet no man can 
imagine the Hebrew to be more copious (though it be 
more comprehensive) than the languages whereinto it 
hath been translated. But it is of originals themselves, 
and the style of the sacred penmen therein, concerning 
which we discourse. And herein the boldness of 
Jerome can not be excused, who more than once 
chargeth St. Paul with solecisims and barbarisms in ex- 
pression, and often urgeth (upon a mistake, as we shall 
see) that he was " unskillful in speech." But as neither 
he nor any one else are able to give any cogent instance 
to make good their charge, so it is certain that there is 
nothing expressed in the whole Scripture, but in the 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 193 

manner and way, and by the words wherewith, it ought 
to be expressed, unto the ends for which it is used and 
designed, as might easily be manifested both from the 
intent of the Holy Ghost Himself in suggesting those 
words unto His penmen, and in the care of God over 
the very iotas and tittles of the words themselves. And 
wherever there appears unto us an irregularity from the 
arbitrary directions or usages of other men in those 
languages, it doth much more become us to suspect our 
own apprehensions and judgment — yea, or to reject 
those directions and usages from the sovereignty of an 
absolute rule — than to reflect the least failure or mistake 
on them who wrote nothing but by Divine inspiration. 

Neither hath their success been much better who have 
exercised their critical ability in judging of the style of 
the particida? writers of the Scripture, preferring one be- 
fore and above another, whereas the style of every one 
of them is best suited to the subject-matter whereof he 
treats, and the end aimed at, and the persons with whom 
he had to do. And herein Jerome hath led the way to 
others, and drawn many into a common mistake. The 
style of Isaiah, he % says, is proper, urbane, high, and 
excellent, but that of Hosea, and especially of Amos, 
low, plain, improper, savouring of the country and his 
profession, who was a shepherd. But those that under- 
stand their style and language will not easily give con- 
sent unto him, though the report be commonly admitted 
by the most. It is true, there appeareth in Isaiah an 
excellent pathos in his exhortations, expostulations, and 
comminations ; attended with efficacious apostrophes, 
prosopopoeias, metaphors, and allusions ; a compact 



I94 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

fullness in his prophecies and predictions, a sweet evan- 
gelical spiritualness in his expression of promises, with 
frequent paronomasias and ellipses, which have especial 
elegancy in that language ; whence he is usually in- 
stanced in by learned men as an example of the elo- 
quence of the Divine writings, and his elegance preferred 
unto that of Demosthenes, or Cicero ; but the reader 
must take heed that he look not for the puculiar excel- 
lencies of that prophet absolutely in the words used by 
him, but rather in the things that it pleased the Holy 
Ghost to use him as His instrument in the revelation of. 
But the other part of Jerome's censure is utterly devoid 
of any good foundation. The style of Amos, consider- 
ing the subject-matter that he treateth of and the 
persons with whom he had to do, in suiting of words 
and speech, wherein all true, solid eloquence consisteth, 
is every way as proper, as elegant, as that of Isaiah. 
Neither will the knowing reader find him wanting in any 
of the celebrated styles of writing, where occasion unto 
them is administered. Thus some affirm that St. Paul 
used sundry expressions (and they instance in I Cor. 4 : 
3; Col. 2: 18) that were proper to the Cilicians, his 
countrymen, and not so proper as to the purity of that 
language wherein he wrote ; but as the first of the ex- 
pressions they instance in is a Hebraism, and the latter 
purely Greek, so indeed they will discover a Tarsian de- 
fect in St. Paul, together with the Patavinity in Livy 
that Pollio noted in him. 

Eloquence and propriety of speech, for the proper 
ends of them, are the gift of God ; and therefore, unless 
pregnant instances may be given to the contrary, it may 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 1 95 

well be thought and expected that they should not be 
wanting in books written by his own inspiration. Nor 
indeed are they ; only we are not able to give a right 
measure of what doth truly and absolutely belong unto 
them. He that shall look for a flourish of painted 
words, artificial, meretricious ornaments of speech, dis- 
course suited to entice, inveigle, and work upon weak 
and carnal affections ; or sophistical, captious ways of 
reasoning, to deceive ; or that smooth and harmonious 
structure of periods, wherein the great Roman orator 
gloried — he that shall look for these things in the Scrip- 
ture, will be mistaken in his aim. Such things become 
not the authority, majesty, greatness, and holiness, of 
Him who speaks therein. An earthly monarch that 
should make use of them in his edicts, laws, or procla- 
mations, would but prostitute his authority to contempt, 
and invite his subjects to disobedience by so doing. 
How much more would they unbecome the declaration 
of His mind and will, given unto poor worms, who is the 
great possessor of Heaven and earth ! 

Besides, these things belong not indeed unto real elo- 
quence and propriety of speech, but are arbitrarily in- 
vented crutches, for the relief of our lameness and in- 
firmity. Men despairing to affect the minds of others 
with the things themselves which they had to propose 
unto them, and acquainted with the baits that are meet 
to take hold of their bruitish affections, with the ways 
of prepossessing their minds with prejudice, or casting 
a mist before their understandings, that they may not 
discern the nature, worth, and excellency, of truth, have 
invented such dispositions of words as might compass 



196 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

the ends they aimed at. And great effects by this 
means have been produced. And therefore the apostle 
tells us, that the rejecting of this kind of oratory in his 
preaching and writing was of indispensable necessity ; 
that it might appear that the effects of them were not 
any way influenced thereby, but were the genuine pro- 
ductions of the things themselves which he delivered, 
1 Cor. 2 : 4-7.. This kind of eloquence, then, the 
Scripture maketh no use of, but rather condemneth its 
application unto the great and holy things whereof it 
treateth, as unbecoming their excellency and majesty. 
Origen says, "If the holy Scripture had used that 
elegancy and choice of speech which are admired among 
the Greeks, one might have suspected that it was not 
truth itself that conquered men, but that they had been 
circumvented and deceived by appearing or fallacious 
consequences, and the splendor or elegancy of speech. " 
That the proper excellency of speech or style con- 
sisteth in the meet accommodation of words unto things, 
with consideration of the person that useth them, and 
the end whereunto they are applied, all men that have 
any acquaintance with these things will confess. 
Dionysius says, "Nature requireth that words should 
follow, or be made to serve, sentences or things, and 
not things be subservient to words ; " whence the too 
curious observation of words hath been censured as an 
argument of an infirm and abject mind. 

The style of the Holy Scripture is every way answer- 
able unto what may rationally be expected from it ; for, 

1. It becometh the majesty, authority and holiness, of 
Him in whose name it speaketh. And hence it is that, 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 197 

by its simplicity without corruption, gravity without 
affection, plainness without alluring ornaments, it doth 
not so much entice, move, or persuade, as constrain, 
press, and pierce into the mind and affections, trans- 
forming them into a likeness of the things which it de- 
livers unto us. And therefore, though St. Paul says 
that he dealt not with the Corinthians in an excellency 
or sublimity of speech or wisdom, like that of the orators 
before described, yet he did in such an evidence of 
spiritual power as was far more effectual and prevalent. 
2. It everywhere becometh the subject-matter it treateth of, 
which because it is various, it is impossible that the style 
wherein it is expressed should be uniform ; when yet, 
notwithstanding all its variety, it everywhere keeps its 
own property — to be, in gravity and authority, still like 
unto itself, and unlike to or distinct from all other writings 
whatsoever Whence Austin rightly says of the holy 
penmen ; " I dare say that whosoever understands what 
they speak, will also understand that they ought not to 
have spoken otherwise." And Origen says of the 
writings of St. Paul in particular ; "If any one give him- 
self to the diligent reading of his epistles, I know full 
well that either he will admire his great conceptions and 
sentences under a plain and vulgar style, or he will 
show himself very •ridiculous." The things treated of 
in the Scripture are, for the most part, heavenly, spir- 
itual, supernatural, Divine; and nothing can be more 
fond than to look for such things to be expressed in a 
flourish of words, and with various ornaments of speech, 
fit to lead away the minds of men from that which they 
are designed wholly to be gathered unto the admiration 



198 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

and contemplation of. Bodies that have a native beauty 
and harmony in the composition of their parts, are 
advantaged more by being. clothed with fit garments 
than by ornaments of gay attire. And the spiritual, 
native beauty of heavenly truths is better conveyed unto 
the minds of men by words and expressions fitted unto 
it plainly and simply, than by any ornaments of en- 
ticing speech whatever. And therefore we say, with 
Austin, that there is not anything delivered in the Scrip- 
ture but just as it ought to be, and as the matter requires. 
3. The style of the holy penmen is, in a gracious con- 
descension, suited unto them and their capacity, whereof 
far the greatest part of them with whom they had to do 
consisted. This Origen at large insists upon in the be- 
ginning of his fifth book against Celus. The philosophy 
and oratory of the heathen were suited principally, if 
not solely, to their capacity that were learned ; this the 
authors and professors of it aimed at — namely, that they 
might approve their skill and ability unto those who 
were able to judge of them. The Scripture was written 
for the good of mankind in general, and without the 
least design of any contemperation of itself to the learn- 
ing and wisdom of men ; and this condescension unto 
the common reason, sense, usage, and experience, of 
mankind in general, is very admirable in holy penmen, 
and absolutely peculiar unto them. In this universal 
suitableness unto all the concernments of it consists that 
excellent simplicity of the Scripture style, whereby it 
plainly and openly, without fraudulent ornaments, in 
common and usual speech, declares things Divine, spir- 
itual, and heavenly, with a holy accommodation of them 



fc Gleanings for Bible Readers. 199 

to the understanding and capacities of men, in such 
occasional variety as yet never diverts from those prop- 
erties and characters wherein the uniformity of the whole 
doth consist. — John Owen, D. D. 



THE DIFFICULTIES OF SCRIPTURE. 

We take into our hands the Bible, and receive it as a 
communication of God's will, made in past ages, to his 
creatures. And we know that, occupying, as all men 
do, the same level of helplessness and destitution, so 
that the adventitious circumstances of rank and educa- 
tion bring with them no differences in moral position, it 
cannot be the design of the Almighty, that superior 
talent or superior learning should be essential to the 
obtaining due acquaintance with revelation. There 
can be no fairer expectation than that the Bible 
will be intelligible to every capacity, and that it 
will not, either in matter or manner, adapt itself 
to one class in preference to another. And when, 
with all this antecedent idea that revelation will 
condescend to the very meanest understanding, we 
find, as it were, on the covers of the book, the descrip- 
tion that there are in it " things hard to be understood, " 
we may, at first, feel something of surprise that difficulty 
should occur where we had looked for simplicity. And 
undoubtedly, however fair the expectation just men- 



200 Gleanings for Bible Readers. g 

tioned, the Bible is, in some senses, a harder book for 
the uneducated man than for the educated. So far as 
human instrumentality is concerned, the great mass of a 
population must be indebted to a few learned men for 
any acquaintance whatsoever with the Scriptures. 
Never let learning be made of small account in reference 
to religion, when, without learning, a kingdom must re- 
main virtually without a revelation. If ther.e were no 
learning in a land, or if that learning were not brought 
to bear on translations of Scripture, how could one out 
of a thousand know anything of the Bible ? Those who 
would dispense with literature in a priesthood, under- 
mine a nation's great rampart against heathenism. And 
just as the unlearned are thus, at the very outset, de- 
pendent altogether on the learned, it is not to be denied 
that the learned man will possess always a superiority 
over the unlearned, and that he has an apparatus at his 
disposal, which the other has not, for overcoming much 
that is difficult in Scripture. 

But after all, when Peter speaks of " things hard to 
be understood," he can not be considered as referring to 
obscurities which human learning will dissipate. He 
certainly mentions the " unlearned " as wresting these 
difficulties, implying that the want of one kind of learn- 
ing produced the perversion. But, of course, he in- 
tends by the " unlearned" those who were not fully 
taught of the Spirit, and not those who were deficient 
in the acquirements of the academy. The " unlearned," 
in short, are also "the unstable ; " it is not the want of 
earthly scholarship which makes the difficulties, it is 
the want of more steadfastness which occasions the 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 20 1 

wrestling. We have nothing, therefore to do, in com- 
menting on the words of Peter, with difficulties which 
may be caused by a defective, and removed by a liberal 
education. The difficulties must be difficulties of sub- 
ject. The things which are handled, and which are 
"hard to be understood," must, in themselves, be deep 
and mysterious, and not such as present intricacies 
which human criticism may prevail to unravel. And 
that there are many of these things in the Bible will be 
questioned by none who have given themselves to its 
study. It were a waste of time to adduce instances of 
the difficulties. To be acquainted with them is to be 
acquainted with Scripture ; whilst to be surprised at 
their existence is to be surprised at what we may call 
unavoidable. It is this latter point which chiefly re- 
quires illustration, though there are others which must 
not be passed over in silence. We assume, therefore, 
as matter-of-fact, that there are in Scripture ' ' things 
hard to be understood." We shall endeavor to show 
you, in the first place, that this fact was to be expected. 

We shall then, in the second place, point out the ad- 
vantages which follow f torn the fact, and the disposition 
which it should encourage. 

And, first, we would show you — though this point re- 
quires but brief examination — that it was to be expected 
that the Bible would contain '* some things hard to be 
understood." We should like to be told what stamp of 
inspiration there would be upon a Bible containing noth- 
ing " hard to be understood." Is it not an almost self- 
evident proposition, that a revelation without difficulty 
could not be a revelation of Divinity ? If there lie any- 
14 



202 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

thing of that unmeasured separation, which we are all 
conscious there must lie, between ourselves and the 
Creator, is it not clear that God cannot be comprehen- 
sible by man ; and that, therefore, any professed reve- 
lation, which left Him not incomprehensible, would be 
thereby its own witness to the falsehood of its own pre- 
tensions ? You ask a Bible which shall, in every 
part, be simple and intelligible. But could such a Bible 
discourse to us of God, that Being who must remain, 
necessarily and for ever, a mystery to the very highest 
of created intelligences ? Could such a Bible treat of 
purposes, which, extending themselves over unlimited 
ages, and embracing the universe within their ranges, 
demand development, and infinity for their theatre? 
Could such a Bible put forward any account of spiritual 
operations, seeing that, whilst confined by the trammels 
of matter, the soul cannot fathom herself, but with- 
draws herself, as it were, and shrinks from her own 
scrutiny ? Could such a Bible, in short, tell us anything 
of our condition, whether by nature or grace ? Could it 
treat of the entrance of evil ; could it treat of the incar- 
nation ; of regeneration ; of a resurrection ; of an im- 
mortality ? In reference to all these matters, there are 
in the Bible "things hard to be understood." But it is 
not the manner in which they are handled which makes 
them "hard to be understood." The subject itsself gives 
the difficulty. If you will not have the difficulty, you 
cannot have the subject. You must have a revelation 
which shall say nothing on the nature of God, for that 
must remain inexplicable ; nothing on the soul, for that 
must remain inexplicable ; nothing on the processes and 



Gleanings for Bible Readers, 203 

workings of Grace, for these must remain inexplicable. 
You must have a revelation, which^shall not only tell 
you that such and such things are, but which shall also 
explain to you how they are ; their mode, their^consti- 
tution, and their essence. And if this were the char- 
acter of revelation, it would undoubtedly be so con- 
structed as to never overtask reason ; but it would, just 
as clearly, be kept within this boundary only by being 
stripped of all on which we mainly need a revelation. 
A revelation in which there shall be nothing ' ' hard to 
be understood, " must limit itself by the power of reason, 
and, therefore, exclude those very topics on which, 
reason being insufficient, revelation is required, we wish 
you to be satisfied on the point, that Scriptural difficul- 
ties are not the result of obscurity of style, of brevity of 
communication, or of a designed abstruseness in the 
method of argument. The difficulties lie simply in the 
mysteriousness of the subjects. There is no want of 
simplicity of language when God is described to us as 
always everywhere. But who understands all this? 
Can language make this intelligible ? Revelation^assures 
us of the fact ; reason, with all her stridings, cannot 
overtake that fact. But would you, therefore, require 
that the omnipresence»of Deity should be shut out from 
revelation ? There is a perfect precision and plainness 
of speech when the Bible discourses on the word being 
made flesh, and on the second person in the Trinity 
humbling Himself to the being " found in fashion as a 
man."- But who can grapple with this prodigy? Is 
the palpable impossibility of explaining, or understand- 
ing it, at all the result of the deficiency of statement ? 



/ 



ZO4 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

Who does not feel that the impossibility lies in himself, 
and that the matter is unintelligible, because necessarily 
overpassing the sweep of his intelligence ? He can re- 
ceive the bare fact ; he cannot receive the explanation. 
But shall we, on this account, and just in order to have 
the Bible free from "things hard to be understood," 
require the incarnation to be expunged from revelation ? 
We might argue in a like manner with regard to 
every Scriptural difficulty. We account for the exist- 
ence of these difficulties mainly by the fact that we are 
men, finite in our capacities. We suppose not that 
it would have been possible, by any power of description 
or any process of explanation, to have made those 
things which are now hard, easier to be understood, 
unless the human faculties had been amplified and 
strengthened, so that men have been carried up to a 
higher rank of being. We can quite believe that to an 
angel, endowed with a nobler equipment of intellectual 
energy, and unincumbered with a frame- work of matter, 
there would be a far clearer idea conveyed by the reve- 
lation, that "there are three bare record in Heaven, and 
these three are one," than is conveyed by such an- 
nouncement to ourselves. But it does not, therefore, 
follow that the doctrine of the Trinity might have 
been made as comprehensible by us as by angels. 
Let there be only the same amount of revelation, and 
the angel may know more than the man, because gifted 
with a keener and more vigorous understanding. And 
it is evident, therefore, that few things could have less 
warranty than the supposition that revelation might 
have been so enlarged, that the knowledge of man 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 205 

would have reached to the measure of the knowledge of 
angels. We again say that there is no deficiency of 
revelation, and that the difficulties which occur in the 
perusal of the Scripture result from the majesty of the 
introduced subjects, and the weakness of the faculties 
turned on their study. It is little short of a contradic- 
tion in terms, to speak of a revelation free altogether 
from things "hard to be understood." And we are 
well persuaded, that, however disposed men may be to 
make the difficulties an objection to the Bible, the 
absence of those difficulties would have been eagerly* 
siezed on as a proof of imposture. There would have 
been fairness in the objection, and skepticism would not 
have been slow in triumphantly urging it — that a book 
which brought down the infinite to the level of the 
finite, must contain false representations, and deserve, 
therefore, to be placed under the outlawry of the world. 
We should have had reason for taking up an opposite 
position, but one far more tenable than she occupied 
when urging from the difficulty, against the Divinity, of 
scripture. Reason has sagacity enough, if you remove 
the bias of the " evil heart of unbelief," to perceive the 
impossibility that God should be searched out and com- 
prehended by man. And if, therefore, reason sat in 
judgment on a professed revelation of the Almighty, 
and found that it gave no account of the Deity,, but 
one, in every respect easy and intelligible, so that God 
described himself as removed not, either in essence or 
properties, from trje ken of humanity, it can scarcely be 
questioned that she would give down as her verdict, 
and that justice would loudly applaud the decision, that 



206 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

the alleged communication from Heaven wanted the 
signs the most elementary of so illustrious an origin. 

It can only be viewed as a necessary consequence on 
the grandeur of the subjects which form the matter of 
revelation, that, with every endeavor at simplicity of 
style and aptitude of illustration, the document con- 
tains statements which overmatch all but the faith of 
mankind. And, therefore, we are bold to say that we 
glory in the difficulties of Scripture. We can indeed 
desire, as well as those who would turn these difficulties 
into occasion of cavil and objection, to understand, 
with a thorough accuracy, the registered truths, and to 
penetrate and explore those solemn mysteries which 
crowd the pages of inspiration. We can feel, whilst 
the volume of Holy writ lies open before us, and facts 
are presented which seem every way infinite — heighth, 
and breadth, and depth, and length, all defying the 
boldest journeyings of the spirit — we can feel the quick 
pulse of an eager wish to scale the mountain, or fathom 
the abyss. But, at the same time, we know, and we 
feel that a Bible without difficulties were a firmament 
without stars. We know, and we feel, that a far-off 
land, enameled, as we believe it, with a loveliness which 
is not of this earth, and inhabited by a tenantry 
gloriously distinct from our own order of being, would 
not be the magnificent and richly-peopled domain which 
it is, if its descriptions overpassed net the outlines of 
human geography. We know, and we feel, that the 
Creator of all things, He who stretched out the heavens 
and sprinkled them with worlds, could not be, what we 
are assured that he is, inaccessibly sublime and awfully 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 207 

great, if there could be given us a portrait of his nature 
and properties, whose every feature might be sketched 
by a human pencil, whose every characteristic scanned 
by a human vision. We know, and we feel, that the 
vast business of our redemption, arranged in the coun- 
cils of the far-back eternity, and acted out amid the 
wondering and throbbings of the universe, could not 
have been that stupenduous transaction which gave God 
glory by giving sinners safety, if the inspired account 
brought its dimensions within the compass of a human 
arithmetic, or defined its issues by the lines of a human 
demarcation. * * * 

But we trench on the second division of our subject, 
and will proceed, therefore, to the more distinct expo- 
sition of the advantages which follow, and the dispo- 
sition which should be encouraged by the fact which 
has passed under review. We see, at once, from the 
statement of Peter, that effects, to all appearance disas- 
trous, are produced by the difficulties of Scripture. 
The " unlearned and unstable " wrest these difficulties to 
"their own destruction ; " and, therefore, though we 
have proved these difficulties unavoidable, by what 
process of reasoning can they be proved advantageous ? 
Now, if we have carried you along with us through our 
foregoing argument, you are already furnished with one 
answer to this inquiry. We have shown you that the 
absence of difficulties would go far toward proving the 
Scriptures uninspired ; and we need not remark that 
there must be a use for difficulties, if essential to the 
complete witness of Christianity. But there are other ad- 
vantages which must, on no account, be overlooked. 



208 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

■ 
We only wish it premised, that through the difficulties 

of Scripture — as, for example, those parts which involve 

predestination — are wrested by many to ' ' their own 

destruction," the " unlearned and unstable " would have 

equally perished, had no difficulties whatsoever existed. 

As the case indeed now stands, the ' ' things hard to 
be understood " are the stumbling blocks over which 
they fall, and falling, are destroyed. But they would 
have stumbled on the plain ground as well as on the 
rough ; there being no more certain truth in theology, 
than that the cause of stumbling is the internal feeble- 
ness, and not the external impediment. A man may 
perish ostensibly through abuse of the doctrine of elec- 
tion. He may say, I am elect, and therefore, shall 
be saved, though I continue in sin. Thus he wrest elec- 
tion, and that too to his own certain destruction. But 
would he not have perished had he found no such doc- 
trine to wrest? Ay! that he would; as fatally, and as 
finally. It is the love of sin, the determination to live 
in sin, which destroys him. Scriptural difficulties de- 
stroy none who would not have been destroyed had no 
difficulties existed. 

This being premised, we may enlarge, without fear, 
on the advantages resulting from the fact that Scripture 
contains " some things hard to be understood." And 
first, if there were nothing in Scripture which over- 
powered our reason, who sees not that intellectual pride 
would be fostered by its study ? The grand moral dis- 
cipline which the Bible now exerts, and which renders 
its perusal the best exercise to which men can be sub- 
jected, lies simply in its perpetual requisition that Rea- 



Gleanings for Bible Readers, 209 

son submit herself to Revelation. You can make no 
way with the disclosures of Holy Writ, until prepared 
to receive, on the authority of God, a vast deal which, 
of yourself, you cannot prove, and still more, which 
you cannot explain. And it is a fine schooling for the 
student, when, at every step in his research, he finds 
himself thrown on his faith — required to admit truth 
because the Almighty hath spoken it, and not because 
he himself can demonstrate, It is just the most rigor- 
ous and wholesome tuition under which the human 
mind can be brought, when it is continually called off 
from its favorite processes of argument and com: 
mentary, and summoned into the position of a meek 
recipient of intelligence to be taken without questioning, 
honored with belief when it cannot be cleared by expo- 
sition. And of all this schooling and tuition you would 
instantly deprive us, if you took away from the Bible 
"things hard to be understood." Nay, it were com- 
paratively little that we should loose the discipline ; we 
should live under a counter sj^stem, encouraging what 
we are bound to repress. If man were at all left to en- 
tertain the idea that he can comprehend God, or meas- 
ure His purposes — and such ideas might be lawful were 
there no mysteries in the Bible — we know no bounds 
which could be set to his intellectual haughtiness, for 
if reason seemed able to embrace Deity, who could per- 
suade her that she is scant and contracted ? I might 
almost be pardoned the fostering a consciousness of 
mental greatness, and the supposing myself endowed 
with a vast nobility of spirit, if I found that I kept 
pace with all the wonders which God brought out from 



210 Gleanings for Bible Readers. 

His own nature, and His own dwelling, and if no dis- 
closures were made to this creation too dazzling for my 
scrutiny, or too deep for my penetration. A Bible 
without difficulties would be a censer full of incense to 
man's reason. It would be the greatest flatterer of rea- 
son, passing on it a compliment and eulogy which 
would infinitely out-do the most far-fetched of human 
panegyrics. And if the fallen require to be kept hum- 
ble ; if we can advance in spiritual attainment only in 
proportion as we feel our insignificance ; would not this 
conversion of the Bible into the very nurse and encour- 
ager of intellectual pride, abstract its best worth from 
Revelation ? And who, therefore, will deny that we 
are advantaged by the fact that there are in Scripture 
" things hard to be understood? " 

We remark again, that though controversy have its 
evils, it has also its uses. We never infer that because 
there is no controversy in a church, there must be the 
upholding of sound doctrine. It is not the stagnant 
water that is generally the purest. And if there are no 
differences of opinion which set men examining and 
ascertaining their own belief, the probability .is that, 
like the Samaritans of old, they will worship they 
"know not what." Heresy itself is, in one sense, 
singularly beneficial. It helps to sift a professing com- 
munity, and to separate the chaff from the wheat. And 
whilst the unstable are carried about by the winds of 
false doctrine, those who keep their steadfastness find, 
as it were, their moral atmosphere cleared by the tem- 
pest. * * * But if there are no 
Scriptural difficulties we could have no controversy. 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 2 1 1 

The " things hard to be understood " form the ground- 
work of differences of opinion ; and if these were swept 
away there would either be space for only one theory, 
or if another were broached, it would be too absurd for 
debate. So that scriptural difficulties are literally the 
representatives of sound doctrine. The Church would 
slumber into ignorance of even simple and elementary 
truth, if there were no hard things, which wrestled by 
the unstable, keep her always on the alert. And if, 
therefore, the upholding through successive generations, 
of a clear and orthodox creed, be a result which you 
hail as teeming with advantage, have we not a right to 
press home on you the fact that it is advantageous to man- 
kind that there are in the Bible ' ' some things hard to be 
understood? " 

We might extend on all sides our view of the advan- 
tages of difficulties. But we are confined, by the limits 
of discourse, and shall adduce one other illustration. 
When I read the Bible and meet with passages which, 
after the most patient exercise of thought and research, 
remain dark and impenetrable, then in the most special 
degree I feel myself immortal. The finding a thing 
" hard to be understood " ministers to my consciousness 
that I am no perishable creature destined to finite exist- 
ence, but a child of eternity appointed to survive the 
dissolution of matter, and to enter on another and an 
untried being. If the Bible be God's revelation of Him- 
self to mankind, it is a most fair expectation that at one 
time or another the whole of this revelation will be clear 
and accessible ; that the obscure points, which we can 
not now scale, will be enlightened by the flashings of a 



2 1 2 Gleanings for Bible Readers, 

brighter luminary, and given up to the marchings of a 
more vigorous inquiry. We can never think that God 
would tell man things for the understanding of which he 
is to be always incapacitated. If he knew them not 
now, the very fact of their being told is sufficient proof 
that he shall know them hereafter. And therefore, in 
every Scriptural difficulty I read the pledge of a mighty 
enlargement of the human faculties. In every mystery, 
though a darkness as thick as the Egyptian may now 
seem to surround it, I can find one bright and burning 
spot glowing with the promise that there shall yet come 
a day when every power of the soul being wrought into 
one celestial strength, I shall be privileged, as it were, 
to stretch out the hand of the lawgiver and roll back the 
clouds which here envelop the truth. The difficulties of 
Holy Writ constitute one great sheet of our charter of 
immortality. 

Such are certain of the advantages which we pro- 
posed to investigate. It yet remains that we briefly 
state, and call upon you to cultivate the dispositions 
which should be. brought to the study of a Bible thus 
" hard to be understood." * * * We 

ought to know before we open the Bible, that it must 
present difficulties of this class and description. We 
are therefore bound, if, in idolizing reason, we should 
not degrade and decry it, to sit down to the study of 
the Scripture with a meek and chastened understanding, 
expecting to be baffled, and ready to submit. We tell 
the young amongst you more especially, who, in the 
pride of an undisciplined intellect, would turn to St. 
Paul, as they turned to Bacon or Locke, arguing that 



Gleanings for Bible Readers. 213 

what was written by man must be comprehensible by 
man — we tell them that nothing is excellent out of its 
place ; and that, in the examination of Scripture, then 
only does reason show herself noble, conscious of the 
presence of a King, the knee is bent, and the head un 
covered. We would have it therefore, remembered, 
that the docility and submissiveness of a child alone 
befit the student of the Bible ; and that, if we would 
not have the whole volume darkened, its simplest truths 
clouding the grasp of our understanding, or gaining, at 
least, no hold on our affections, we must lay aside the 
feelings which we carry into the domains of science and 
philosophy, not arming ourselves with a chivalrous re- 
solve to conquer, but with one which it is a thousand- 
fold harder, either to perform or execute, to yield. The 
Holy Spirit alone can make us feel the things which are 
easy to be understood, and prevent our wrestling those 
which are hard. Never, then, should the Bible be 
opened except with prayer for the teachings of this 
Spirit. — Henry Me hill, B. D. 




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